Manipura (Mahabharata)

Manipura (Sanskrit: मणिपुर, romanized: maṇipura, lit. 'city of jewels'), known as Manalura in the Southern and Critical Editions, is the capital city of a kingdom mentioned in the Hindu epic Mahabharata. According to the epic, it was located near a sea-shore, the Mahendra Mountains and the Kalinga Kingdom. Arjuna—one of the five Pandava brothers—visited Manipura and married Chitrangada, the princess of the region. They had a son named Babruvahana who later ruled it.

Manipur shares its name with a modern-day state of India, located in the North-Eastern part of the country. Some rulers of the state had claimed themselves to be the descendants of Arjuna. Some past scholars support the identification of the state with the city, others oppose this idea. However, the identification of the Manipura kingdom in the Mahabharata with the modern-day Indian state of Manipur is widely regarded by scholars as historically unsubstantiated. Geographic descriptions in the epic place the kingdom near coastal Kalinga, linguistically distinct from the Tibeto-Burman Meitei culture. Furthermore, genealogical and textual inconsistencies—combined with the absence of such traditions in early local chronicles—indicate that the connection is a product of later cultural reinterpretations, particularly during the Hinduization of Manipur in the 18th century. Based on the geographical description given in the epic, they state that Manipura kingdom was in present-day Odisha or Andhra Pradesh.