In honour of the original inhabitants of our hills.
-Admin

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Lepcha Mad
Dr. Sonam B. Wangyal

Of the many people the Lepchas honour few can match the reverence that Lieutenant General George Byres Mainwaring (proper pronunciation Mannering) commands. This veneration becomes all the more significant since Mainwaring was not a Lepcha and belonged to an aristocratic family of Cavenagh-Mainwaring from Whitmore and Budduph in Staffordshire. He was born in India on 18 July 1825 while his father was serving in the Bengal Civil Service. From his father George Mainwaring he received his first name, George, and from his mother, Isabella Byres, his middle name Byres. As it was the convention with people possessing money and status the boy Mainwaring was packed off to ‘home’, in his case home being Aberdeen, Scotland, to complete his studies and from Aberdeen it was to Wimbledon for higher learning in classics and mathematics. In the confines of the British institutions little did the young lad know that one day he would be a champion amongst the Lepchas and that he would be reverentially recalled by this community even well beyond a hundred years of his death.

At a tender age of seventeen he was commissioned into the 16th Bengal Native Infantry and on 8 January 1842 he sailed for India. His first few years in India must have made a man out of him for he had hardly acclimatized and oriented himself with the sub-continent when he was inducted into the business of a professional soldier in the Battle of Mahaharajpur. Young Mainwaring did not do too badly and he was awarded the Gwalior Campaign Bronze Star in 1843. After a short break he was back again in action in the First Sikh War of 1845-46. He saw action in Moodki, Ferozashapur and Sobraon and in these battles to he accredited himself fairly for which he received the Sutlej Campaign Medal (1845-46) being cited for the Battles of Ferozashapur and Sobraon.

From 1846 to 1854 there is visible blank in his career records and it can be presumed that the period of peace and lull was utilized by the soldier in learning something more refined than firing guns and cannons. He probably became interested in Indian languages and the period was used in studying Hindustani and Urdu. Anyway, by 1854 he had been in service for twelve years in India and he left for England to sort out personal matters that had been unattended during the long absence from home. He returned to India after three years when the country was heavily under the cloud of Indian Sepoy Mutiny/First War of Independence. He had sufficient knowledge of Hindustani and Urdu and because of that proficiency he was immediately posted to Kanpur as an interpreter with the 42nd and 49th Highlanders. Then after several uneventful years, a trip home for medical causes, and a short stint in Punjab he received orders that would cut profound and permanent impression on him: he was ordered to Darjeeling to study the Lepcha language and compile a grammar and a dictionary.

Between the end of 1867 and the beginning of 1868 he arrived in Darjeeling and began his career as a student of the Lepcha grammar and compiler of the first Lepcha dictionary. The bustling town of Darjeeling had very few Lepcha speakers for by 1868 the Lepchas were a relatively marginalized society with a few living in the fringes of the town and the majority being located in far flung areas. It is recorded that Mainwaring lived with the Lepchas in Lebong area and then moved on to a village called Polungdong. It is difficult to trace this place in the old maps of Darjeeling but the District Records of 1841-79 records that Phulungdung was the Roman transliteration from Tibetan of Fullaloon (Phalilung / Phulung), today’s Phalut, and so it appears that Mainwaring chose this very remote and inhospitable area for his second phase of his work. The choice was probably influenced by the presence of a Lepcha priestess, Mun, who was an authority in the language and maybe also because he would be able to pursue his studies undisturbed in this isolated area.

In 1876 “A Grammar of the Rong (Lepcha) Language” was published and although missionaries like Rev. Start and Rev. Niebel had tried to compile a grammar way back in the 1840s this became the first comprehensive work to see print. The grammar being published he could now concentrate on the dictionary and today even a non-Lepcha reader will be amazed to read the fine details in the dictionary. It will be very safe to claim that despite the development and popularity of the Nepali language it is impossible to find a Nepali dictionary that compares favourably to Mainwaring’s Lepcha dictionary, with a possible exception of Turner’s “A Comparative and Etymological Dictionary of the Nepali Language”. Unfortunately, Mainwaring died before he could publish the dictionary and his unpublished work was taken to Germany by one of his colleagues and was finally published in Berlin in 1898 under the supervision of Dr. Albert Grunwedel, a Tibetologist.

Mainwaring’s involvement with the Lepcha people was not confined to their grammar and dictionary only for he actually lived like a Lepcha and one could almost claim that he thought like a Lepcha. He opened up a Lepcha school at Lebong and has been credited for buying a hundred acres of land for a collective farm for the Lepchas. He dressed in the Lepcha costume and even while attending official matters in Darjeeling he would not shed the Lepcha dress. In fact his involvement was so complete that has been described as “Lepcha Mad”. Major Lyansong Tamsang of Kalimpong, a strong campaigner for the Lepcha cause, remarks, “This remarkable man…loved the Lepcha language and respected the Lepcha way of life, living, religion, culture, tradition and heritage, tried very hard indeed to protect, as well as to enhance, the Lepcha language and succeeded in doing so.” Mainwaring died in 1893 but the reprint of his voluminous dictionary still finds buyers around the world. Lepchas too have not forgotten him and every year the Sikkim Lepcha Youth Association remember him through “General G.B. Mainwaring Lepcha Literary Award” which is awarded to a distinguished scholar for significant contribution to the Lepcha language and literature. It appears that Mainwaring was mad for the right reasons and as long as the Lepcha people stay true to their language and culture he will be remembered reverentially for this unique madness.