Lainingthou Sanamahi — indigenous deity of Manipur Meiteis
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Sanamahi (Meitei: ꯁꯅꯥꯃꯍꯤ; literally sana = "gold" + mahi = "liquid/essence"; often prefixed Lainingthou, "Lord of the Divine") is the household-hearth deity of the Meitei people of Manipur and the supreme god of the Sanamahi Laining (Sanamahi religion) — the indigenous pre-Vaishnava Meitei faith whose 20th-century revival has made it a live religious and political movement. He is the Manipur T0 anchor, included here as the largest surviving indigenous non-Abrahamic, non-Hindu religion native to any Indian state.
This entry uses only Tier 1 sources by the ELGODS policy: the Parratts' fieldwork (1980, 1997) remains the foundational English-language scholarship, supplemented by Jyotirmoy Roy's history, L. Bhagyachandra Singh's philosophical study, and John Parratt's political analysis. Sanamahism has living adherents with contested views on how the tradition should be represented externally; this entry therefore restricts itself to well-documented shared features and avoids entering internal theological or political disputes.
In Sanamahist theology, the supreme formless creator is Atiya Guru Sidaba (also Kuru Sidaba or Soraren), who emanates the primordial couple Salailel Sidaba (male) and Leimarel Sidabi (female, the earth-mother). Sanamahi is their son, born alongside his brother Pakhangba. The foundational myth narrates a contest between the two brothers for primogeniture: Pakhangba, through the intervention of the mother Leimarel, is placed on the ancestral throne as the first Meitei king — his serpentine form is the royal emblem of the Meitei state. Sanamahi, in compensation, is installed as the deity of every Meitei household — permanently present in the southwest corner of every home and in every life-cycle ritual, a more intimate and geographically ubiquitous divinity than his royal-throne-holding brother.
The 18th-century reign of Pamheiba (Garibniwaz, r. 1709–1748) introduced Ramanandi Vaishnavism as the state religion of Manipur, including the famous 1732 incident in which the king ordered the burning of Meitei Puya (ritual manuscripts) — a trauma that remains central to contemporary Sanamahist identity. Parratt (2005) documents how, for the next two centuries, Sanamahi worship continued within households even as Vaishnava rituals dominated public and royal religion. This dual-register arrangement — Vaishnava in the temple courtyard, Sanamahi in the household hearth — is the defining structural feature of Meitei religion from 1750 to the present.
Laininghan Naoriya Phulo (1888–1941) and subsequent reformers articulated Sanamahism as a distinct religion, recovered the Puya literature, and in 1945 organised what became the Sanamahi Laining Movement. The Indian Census now records Sanamahism as a separate religion (~240,000 adherents in Manipur in the 2011 census, likely undercounted); the Meitei script (Meitei Mayek) has been re-introduced in state education. Contemporary Sanamahism is both a religious revival and a political statement against the Vaishnavisation of Meitei identity — the line between the two is contested within the community itself.
The annual Lai Haraoba ("pleasing of the gods") festival, held in April–May, is the principal public expression of Sanamahi religion. It is a multi-day ritual cycle involving the Maibi (priestesses), Maiba (priests), and pena (stringed-instrument) musicians, featuring cosmogonic dance, ancestral invocations, and the enactment of the Pakhangba-Sanamahi creation cycle. The Parratts' (1997) The Pleasing of the Gods is the definitive study.
Sanamahi is the Manipur T0 anchor and the ELGODS census's first entry on an indigenous non-Hindu Indian religion with its own textual tradition, ritual specialists, and active theological community. His inclusion is a test of whether ELGODS can represent religious diversity at the actual granularity of the subcontinent, rather than absorbing all indigenous traditions into a "folk Hinduism" rubric.
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