Lai Haraoba

The oldest surviving layer of Meitei religion, older than the eighteenth-century Vaishnavite conversion, and the source of much of the vocabulary of Manipuri classical dance.

To please the Umang Lai, the ancestral and tutelary deities of the pre-Vaishnavite Meitei religion, and to re-enact the creation of the world.

Three phases. Lai Eekouba calls the sacred presence up out of a pond or river and carries it into the shrine; Haraoba is the main run of dance, pena music and offerings; Lairoi closes the sequence and sends the deity back.

The calling up of the deity from water, days of ritual dance and pena music, and the closing rite that returns the presence.

The world's creation is re-enacted in gesture — the maibi priestesses dance the making of the body and the land.

Lai Haraoba predates the Vaishnavite turn in Manipur and belongs to the older Sanamahi tradition, kept at grove shrines rather than temples.