About the Book The National Mission for Manuscripts was established in February 2003 by the Ministry of Culture. Its purpose is to locate, document, preserve and disseminate the knowledge content of Indian manuscripts. While looking ahead to reconnect with the knowledge of the past, the Mission is in the process of trying to re-contextualize the knowledge contained in manuscripts for the present and the future generations. The Mission organizes seminars on various subjects related to Indian knowledge in different locations of India. The papers presented in the seminar are collected and published under the Samikşikä series.

This Samiksik series brings forth the papers presented at the seminar "History of Tripura: As reflected in the Manuscripts". The Seminar was organised in collaboration with Tripura University and Prof Satya Deo Poddar was the Coordinator of the seminar. The book aims at exploring the resources for the reconstruction of the history of Tripura utilizing manuscripts as a source materials. While going through the contents of papers, there emerged a fresh look about the history of Chakma and Mogs in Tripura. The social practices, rituals and traditions of Tripura have been comprehensively described in this book.

Foreword One of the major objectives of the National Mission for Muniscripts (NMM) is to provide ready access to the manuscripts or related informations through publication. Scholars specializing in various fields are invited to present research papers in the seminars which are eventually published by the Mission under its title Samkshika series. The Mision had organized one such seminar on 'History of Tripura as Reflected in the Manuscripts' in collaboration with Tripura Unniversity.

Introduction North East India stands in near oblivion in the cultural contour of India because we do not have any written records. Identification, documentation and editing of manuscripts can help the scholars for reconstructing the cultural mapping of the region. Cultural mapping of India will remain incomplete without Tripura in particular. Ancient and Medieval history of Tripura is bleak in terms of source materials and modem history of the state is also based on chronicles and mostly on English sources. Rajmala is the only written chronicle where the idea of monarchial structure can be deciphered. We do not have the social, cultural and economic contour of ancient and medieval Tripura in absence of ready reference. We construct some history from Persian source materials during the time of Samser Gazi but that too is not sufficient. The study of history is a continuous process and the continuity of medieval history of India has been lost in the land of Tripura. We do not have ample information of the history of Chakma and Mog tribes. More than two thousand Chakma and Mog Manuscripts have been identified so far and around a thousand manuscripts are left with non-tribal communities, say Manipuri and Bengalee of Tripura.

.Book's Contents and Sample Pages