Ukhrul District

Ukhrul
district
Location of Ukhrul district in Manipur
Coordinates: 25°07′00″N 94°22′00″E / 25.11667°N 94.36667°E / 25.11667; 94.36667Coordinates: 25°07′00″N 94°22′00″E / 25.11667°N 94.36667°E / 25.11667; 94.36667
Country	India
State	Manipur
Headquarters	Ukhrul
Area
• Total	4,544 km2 (1,754 sq mi)
Area rank	2
Population (2011)
• Total	183,115
• Rank	7
• Density	40/km2 (100/sq mi)
Languages
• Official	Tangkhul Naga (Naga)
Time zone	IST (UTC+5:30)
Vehicle registration	MN
Website	manipur.gov.in

Ukhrul (Pron:/ˈuːkˌɹəl or ˈuːkˌɹʊl/) is a district in the north eastern state of Manipur in India. It lies about 84 kilometres (52 mi) north east of Imphal.

It was marked out first as a sub-division in 1919 during the British Raj. It was later upgraded to a full-fledged district, bearing the nomenclature of Manipur East District in November 1969 by the Government of India.

Linguistically, the Tangkhuls belong to a large language family called Sino-Tibetan, and within that family to the sub-family Tibeto-Burman. In general this points towards an origin in the north, that is south-west China and Tibet. The earliest home of the Tangkhuls was the upper reaches of the Huang heo and Yangtze Rivers which lies in the Zinjiang province of China. Like the other desert areas of the world, the people including the Tangkhuls, due to hardship of life, dispersed from this place to different directions. One group moved towards the east and southeast to be become known as Chinese, and another group moved southward to become the tribes of Tibeto-Burman, which includes the Tangkhuls and other tribes. That was between c, 10,000 B.C. to 8000 B.C. This movement has continued into recent historic times. S.K. Chatterjee noted that from 2000 B.C. onwards, Sino-Tibetan speakers from China pushed south and west and entered India. According to W.I. Singh, in his The History of Manipur, the Tangkhuls settled in the Samshok (Thuangdut) area in Myanmar. They belong to the Yakkha tribe in China. The Tangkhuls were first noticed in Manipur by Poireiton, one of the earliest kings of a principality in Manipur valley.

The Tangkhuls and other Naga tribes came to Manipur, Nagaland, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh through Myanmar. Some of them also settled down in Myanmar and did not venture further. However, their movement over Myanmar and into India was spread over a period of time. They entered the present habitat in waves following one another and in some cases in close succession. The Tangkhuls came together with the Maos, Poumeis, Marams and Thangals because all of them have references to their dispersal from Makhel, a Mao village in Senapati district. They had also erected megaliths at Makhel in memory of their having dispersed from there to various directions.

The Tangkhuls point to the association of their forefathers with the seashore. Most of the ornaments of the Tangkhuls such as kongsang and huishon were made of sea shells. Cowrie and conch shells are prominent features of the people who live on the shore.

By the 2nd century AD the Tangkhuls were living in Samshok (Thuangdut) in Myanmar. Ptolemy, a Greek astronomer and geographer of Alexandria, in his Geography of Further India c. 140 AD, referred to the Tangkhul (Nangalogue) at Triglypton (Thuangdut). The Tangkhuls began to disperse from Samshok after the invasion of Ko-lo-feng and his successor I-mau-shun the king of Nan-chao in the closing part of the 8th century AD and beginning of the 9th century AD. They were further driven towards the north-west of Myanmar by the Shan people.