More Between Lines

This is to continue conversation, post-reading, on the previous post.

Hillel had been consolidating his rhetorical position all along. The final thesis of the book is that the Chhinlung Israel theory is "107%" tenable but the details are a little more nuanced than meets the eye. The key to the thesis is a proto-Kuki mi lui which fellow Lusei readers will recognize as mi hlui or 'old people'. The mi lui were somehow linked to the Samarian populace ousted/exiled in 722 BCE by Shalamaneser. This was when Samaria was the northern kingdom in the line of Saul, David, Solomon and before the infamy Samaria came to be associated with in Judeo-Christian mindsets. The mi lui moved eastward as far as Mongolia and then turned southwest to finally settle down on the edges of Imphal, Manipur. Later migration of the Hmar from the southwest (Mizoram, Burma) led to the melding of traditions and practices but the semitic legacy had been preserved in the exclusive chants and practices of the thempu priests. The thempu tradition in turn informs the seemingly random claims of Jewish ancestry that one hears around the hills; Kuki-Chin groups have Manmasi as an ancestor figure which resonates with Manasseh, one of the northern kingdom tribes exiled by Shalamaneser.

Pivotal to the thesis is the work of Dr. Khuplam who documents the oral traditions and observed practices in The Wonderful Genealogical Tales of the Kuki-Chin-Mizo based on which, along with some subtle linguistic gymnastics, Hillel connects the Chhinlung Israel mipuite to the lost-tribe group. Dr. Khuplam's effort is commendable and yet Hillel seems to uncritically allow too little to over-determine too much. Negotiating the oral-written binaries of recording data and cognizant of truth regimes implied in such epistemic projections, the subject poses a vibrant potential for more research and with the added bonus of a decent preliminary work done in Across the Sabbath River. If one were to consider findings like those of the Genographic project, rather than Israel we should all be clamoring for visas to Ethiopia or one of the countries inhabited by the San people. That one choses however to stop at Israel poses larger psycho-social questions and how people signify some basic existential issues on larger projects such as 'origins'.

Oh yes, my cousin Zohminga showed up again toward the end, this time as a fill in translator in place of a George Lawma whose antics just didn't fly with Hillel. These Hillel-George Lawma parleys were a subplot worth a serious side-read. To taper off what seems like an overdone blog post, Across the Sabbath River should make for an informed reading if not an engaged one.