Editor's Note to Volume III
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2013
Summary
The draft of this book, the third volume of the author's annotated translation of the Cheitharon Kumpapa, the Court Chronicle of the Kings of Manipur, was completed a week before her death. In editing her draft I have tried to keep as closely as possible to the methodology which she set out in the Introduction to Volume 1, which readers of this volume will find it helpful to consult. The guiding principle in her translation was to render the Meetei Mayek manuscript as literally as possible into English, both to reflect as accurately as possible the style of the original and also as an aid for those readers who are able to compare it to the original text. This is not an easy task, given the complexity of the Manipuri sentences, the multiplicity of subordinate clauses, and constructions which, if rendered absolutely literally into English, would not be strictly grammatical. Direct speech especially causes particular problems. Furthermore the original (as in common in ancient documents) has no breaks between words or sentences, or punctuation (apart from the marker at the end of paragraphs). In a few places in this translation excessively long sentences have been broken up for clarity, but on the whole the rendering tries to reflect the construction patterns of the original.
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- The Court Chronicle of the Kings of ManipurThe Cheitharon Kumpapa, pp. xiii - xviPublisher: Foundation BooksPrint publication year: 2013