INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR INNOVATIVE RESEARCH IN MULTIDISCIPLINARY FIELD

Abstract:  This paper argues that the Manipuri folktale of Kabui Keioiba encodes Meitei society’s anxieties about hybridity, boundary-crossing, and the erosion of human identity. The tale follows a priest who misuses magical knowledge to become a tiger-man, presenting therianthropy functions not as liberation but as degeneration and disorder in Meitei folklore. Marked as a transgressor of social and cosmic limits, Kabui Keioiba embodies the threat of liminality. Using structuralist, psychoanalytic, and postcolonial approaches, the paper analyzes the narrative arc, i.e. transformation, transgression, and termination, as a symbolic grammar upholding cultural boundaries. The destruction of both the hybrid and his offspring reflects the community’s rejection of unstable identities. Yet, the tale’s continued retelling suggests ambivalence: the hybrid is both feared and fascinating. In Meitei folklore, therianthropy ultimately becomes a narrative tool for negotiating tensions between change and stability, self and other, sacred and profane.