NepalThe Three Kingdoms
Figure 2. Nepal and Bhutan, 1991
After 1482, a crucial date in Nepalese history, the
kingdom
became divided. At first, the six sons of Yakshamalla
attempted to
reign collegially, in their grandfathers' pattern.
Ratnamalla was
the first to rebel against this system of joint rule,
seizing
Kathmandu in 1484 and ruling there alone until his death
in 1520.
Rayamalla, the eldest brother, ruled Bhadgaon with the
other
brothers until his death, when the crown there passed into
the
hands of his descendants. Banepa broke away under
Ramamalla until
its reincorporation into the Bhadgaon kingdom in 1649.
Patan
remained aloof, dominated by factions of its local
nobility, until
Sivasimhamalla, a descendant of Ratnamalla, conquered it
in 1597
and united it with Kathmandu. On his death, however,
Kathmandu and
Patan were given to different grandsons and again
separated. The
center of Nepal thus remained split into three competing
kingdoms,
roughly based on Bhadgaon, Kathmandu, and Patan. The
influence of
these petty kingdoms outside the valley varied over time.
Bhadgaon
extended its feeble power as far as the Dudh Kosi in the
east,
Kathmandu controlled areas to the north and as far west as
Nuwakot,
and Patan included territories to the south as far as
Makwanpur.
The relationships among the kingdoms within the valley
became quite
convoluted. Although all three ruling houses were related
and
periodically intermarried, their squabbles over miniscule
territorial gains or ritual slights repeatedly led to
warfare. The
kings attended coronation rituals or marriages at each
other's
capitals and then plotted the downfalls of their
relatives.
The period of the three kingdoms--the time of the later
Mallas--lasted until the mid-eighteenth century. The
complete
flowering of the unique culture of the Kathmandu Valley
occurred
during this period, and it was also during this time that
the old
palace complexes in the three main towns achieved much of
their
present-day forms. The kings still based their legitimate
rule on
their role as protectors of dharma, and often they were
devout
donors to religious shrines. Kings built many of the older
temples
in the valley, gems of late medieval art and architecture,
during
this late Malla period. Buddhism remained a vital force
for much of
the population, especially in its old seat of Patan.
Religious
endowments called guthi arranged for long-term
support of
traditional forms of worship or ritual by allowing temple
or
vihara lands to pass down through generations of
the same
families; this support resulted in the preservation of a
conservative art, architecture, and religious literature
that had
disappeared in other areas of South Asia. Newari was in
regular use
as a literary language by the fourteenth century and was
the main
language in urban areas and trading circles based in the
Kathmandu
Valley. Maithili, the language of the Tirhut area to the
south,
became a popular court language during the seventeenth
century and
still was spoken by many people in the Tarai in the late
twentieth
century. In the west, Khas bhasha, or the language of the
Khasa,
was slowly expanding, only later to evolve into
present-day Nepali.
The final centuries of Malla rule were a time of great
political change outside the Kathmandu Valley. In India
overlordship in Delhi fell to the powerful Mughal Dynasty
(1526-1858). Although the Mughals never exercised direct
lordship
over Nepal, their empire had a major indirect impact on
its
institutional life. During the sixteenth century, when the
Mughals
were spreading their rule over almost all of South Asia,
many
dispossessed princes from the plains of northern India
found
shelter in the hills to the north.
Legends indicated that many small principalities in
western
Nepal originated in migration and conquest by exiled
warriors, who
added to the slow spread of the Khasa language and culture
in the
west. Along with these exiles came Mughal military
technology,
including firearms and artillery, and administrative
techniques
based on land grants in return for military service. The
influence
of the Mughals is reflected in the weapons and dress of
Malla
rulers in contemporary paintings and in the adoption of
Persian
terminology for administrative offices and procedures
throughout
Nepal.
Meanwhile, in Tibet domestic struggles during the 1720s
led to
decisive intervention by the powerful Qing rulers of China
(1644-1911). A Chinese force installed the sixth Dalai
Lama (the
highest ranking Tibetan religious leaders) in Lhasa in
1728, and
thereafter the Chinese stationed military governors
(amban)
in Lhasa to monitor local events. In 1729 representatives
of the
three Nepalese kingdoms sent greetings and presents to the
Chinese
emperor in Beijing, after which the Qing viewed Nepal as
an
outlying tributary kingdom (a perception not shared within
Nepal).
The expansion of big empires in both the north and south
thus took
place during a time when Nepal was experiencing
considerable
weakness in its traditional center. The three kingdoms
lived a
charmed life--isolated, independent, and quarreling in
their
mountain valley--as the systems around them became larger
and more
centralized.
By the seventeenth century, the mountain areas to the
north of
the valley and the Kiranti region to the east were the
only areas
that maintained traditional tribal communal systems,
influenced to
various degrees by Hindu ideas and practices. In the west
and the
south of the three kingdoms, there were many petty states
ruled by
dynasties of warrior (Kshatriya) status, many claiming an
origin
among princely, or Rajput, dynasties to the south. In the
near
west, around the Narayani River system (the Narayani was
one of the
seven Gandak rivers), there was a loose confederation of
principalities called the Chaubisi (the Twenty-four),
including
Makwanpur and Palpa. In the far west, around the Karnali
River
system, there was a separate confederation called the
Baisi (the
Twenty-two), headed by the raja of Jumla. The
confederations were
in constant conflict, and their member states were
constantly
quarreling with each other. The kingdoms of Kathmandu,
Patan, and
Bhadgaon periodically allied themselves with princes among
these
confederations. All of these small, increasingly
militarized states
were operating individually at a higher level of
centralized
organization than ever before in the hills, but they were
expending
their resources in an almost anarchic struggle for
survival. There
was an awareness of the distinct culture of the Himalayan
area but
no real concept of Nepal as a nation.
The first contacts between the people of Nepal and
Europeans
also occurred during the period of the later Mallas. The
Portuguese
missionaries John Cabral and Stephen Cacella visited Lhasa
in 1628,
after which Cabral traveled to Nepal. The first Capuchin
mission
was founded in Kathmandu in 1715. These contacts, however,
affected
only a miniscule number of people. Of far greater
importance was
the growth of British power in India, notably in Bengal to
the
southeast of Nepal, during the eighteenth century. By 1764
the
British East India Company, officially a private trading
corporation with its own army, had obtained from a
decaying Mughal
Empire the right to govern all of Bengal, at that time one
of the
most prosperous areas in Asia. The company explored
possibilities
for expanding its trade or authority into Nepal, Bhutan,
and toward
Tibet, where the Nepalese had their own trading agencies
in
important settlements
(see
fig. 2). The increasingly
powerful
company was emerging as a wild card that could in theory
be played
by one or more of the kingdoms in Nepal during local
struggles,
potentially opening the entire Himalayan region to British
penetration.
Data as of September 1991
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