The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c23.s4.27

v4.c23.s4.27

In 1755 Alaungpaya sent an expedition to instil respect into the Manipurīs, who significantly call this, the first of his dynasty’s inroads, “The First Devastation”; the Manipurīs found the Burmese on this occasion using firearms for the first time, their weapons, like those of the Manipurīs, having previously been only swords, spears, bows and arrows. In 1758–59 he himself led a force over the hills by the Khumbat route; at Pulel in the Imole pass the Manipurīs gave him battle and fled after a stubborn conflict; he entered Imphal, the capital, only to find it empty, as the inhabitants lay hiding in the woods; he left garrisons in permanent stockades at Tamu and Thaungdut, and returned home; in his capacity as a divine incarnation he promoted religion among the Kathe (Cassay, Manipur) Shans along his line of march; in his capacity as a king he massacred² more than four thousand of his Manipurī prisoners because they stubbornly refused to march away in his slave gangs. These incursions, lasting down to 1819, ended by depopulating the country and stamping out Manipurī civilisation so completely that we can no longer tell what their social and political conditions were like.³ The Burmese valued Manipurī captives highly and settled them near the capital; they served the court as silversmiths; as silk-workers they introduced the *acheik* pattern;⁴ they gave the Burmese army its best cavalry (the Cassay horse) and they supplied the bulk of the court astrologers, who stood robed in white, intoning benedictions, as the king took his seat on the throne.