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Chapter Three Nepal, the Kathmandu Valley, and Some History
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The Gorkhali State, And the Submerging of the Newars in Greater Nepal

In the latter part of the eighteenth century Prthvinarayana Saha, the ruler of a tiny principality, Gorkha, in the western part of present-day Nepal, began a series of campaigns that were to lead to the fall of the ancient Valley dynasties and a transformation of the situation of the Newars. The conquest of the Valley was a result of twenty-five years of coordinated effort. Ludwig Stiller (1973, 104f.) has delineated the "phases" of the conquest:

Phase one, 1744-54 aimed at sealing off the northern and western passes, therby cutting off the flow of money into the Valley from Tibet. . . . Phase two, 1754-64, aimed at cutting the Valley off from the states to the south, and preventing any flow of help or supplies into the Valley. [This phase] was chiefly characterized by a stringent blockade that seriously weakened the Malla Kings and reduced the people of the Valley to a total dependence on the produce of the Valley itself. . . . Phase three, 1764-69 provided the coup de grace to the Malla Kings. With their isolation complete, the Malla Kings were forced to watch in morbid fascination as the Gorkhali troops pushed their outposts right up to the walls of their capitals and finally to see them break through [to] the final victory.


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The combination of careful strategy, the determination of the tough invaders, and the internal division of the comfortable, long-settled Valley kingdoms led to the fall of Kathmandu on September 25, 1768 and of Patan on October 6, 1768.

Bhaktapur held out for more than a year, and was the last of the Valley kingdoms to succumb. "On the night of 10 November 1769 the Gorkhalis burst through the eastern gate [of Bhaktapur] and poured into the city. . . . The battle for the city lasted until 12 November, with the defenders gradually withdrawing to the more protected places in the palace and the Gorkhalis edging nearer and nearer. . . . Jaya Prakash [the king of Kathmandu, who had taken refuge in Bhaktapur] had taken virtual command of the defenses and it was only after he had been wounded by a musket ball in the leg that the defense collapsed" (Stiller [1973, 129f.], taken from the Bhasha Vamsavali, 887-892).

The old Nepal, the Nepal of the Newars was now to be radically transformed. This was not, as it had been from Licchavi times, to be a new dynasty fitting into and ruling from inside an established community, eventually to be integrated into it. For now the Newars—Malla kings, Brahmans and all—were considered to be just another of the many ethnic groups that were to be brought together in a greatly expanded territory and ruled over by the Gorkhalis and their allies from the western hills.

The historiography of Nepal now turns to the new, larger Nepal and to Kathmandu, its national capital. It becomes even more difficult to find in the available written sources the specific history of the now submerged Newars, deprived of their kings but to a considerable degree otherwise left to get on with their affairs in the traditional manner, with the new kings of the Saha line established (in Gorkhali perspective, at least) as the legitimate political and ceremonial heirs of the old dynasty. The situation in Kathmandu was special, for Prthvinarayana Saha chose it as the capital of his new kingdom, and it became his royal city. The other cities, Patan, and even more so the more distant Bhaktapur, were peripheral to the events at the center.

The general policy of the Gorkhali rulers toward the multiple ethnic and political units that made up their new state was, as Stiller (1973, 225f.) remarks, to rely on the existing structures in the annexed kingdoms:

It has been said by historians of Nepal, and very wisely too, that the Gorkhali conqueror did not introduce large-scale change because to do so would unnecessarily disturb the people of the conquered territories and lead to un-


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rest and possibly m uprisings. This is basically true. But the failure of the Gorkhalis to introduce such changes goes much deeper than that. For the typical Gorkhali administrator of the time, limited as he was by his own experiences in his own tiny state, merely to grasp what was being done m other localities was an accomplishment. . . . He did not introduce changes, largely because he did not know how things could be done better, and this was true because he did not understand, at least initially, how things were done at all. The Gorkhali was thus forced by the very magnitude of the problem to rely at the outset on local administrative structures in the areas conquered.

Those traditional forms that assured some stability were useful to the Gorkhalis. As long as they maintained order and were able to collect revenues the internal structure of the various units, even in nearby Bhaktapur, seems to have been of little concern to them. They were, however, in closer contact with the Valley Newars than with the outlying tribal and hill people. A kind of division of function took place. The Newars were the farmers, the craftsmen, and the merchants. The Gorkhalis and their old allies were the rulers, administrators, and soldiers. In time, Newars were used as advisors and in lower-level government positions. Yet, Bhaktapur, although some few of its people had some business or position in Kathmandu, remained albeit without its king, a Newar city.

We now begin to have descriptions of Bhaktapur by foreign observers during the period of the Grokhali kings and their Rana prime ministers (who during a period of 100 years became de facto rulers of Greater Nepal). Colonel Kirkpatrick, on a mission to the Kathmandu Valley in 1793, noted that Bhaktapur (which he called "Bhatgaong") was the smallest of the three Valley cities[31] but "its palace and buildings, in general, are of more striking appearance, and its streets, if not much wider, are at all events much cleaner than those of the metropolis" (Kirkpatrick [1811] 1969, 163). This was faint praise for he had remarked that the streets of the "metropolis," Kathmandu, were "excessively narrow and nearly as filthy as those of Benares" (ibid., 160).

Of the Newars, after noting that they differ from the other Hindu inhabitants of Nepal in character, customs, manners, features, religious rites, and language, he writes that they were "a peaceable, industrious and even ingenious people, very much attached to the superstition they profess, and tolerably reconciled to the chains imposed on them by their Gorkhali conquerors, although these have not hitherto condescended to conciliate them by the means which their former sovereigns . . . adopted" (Kirkpatrick 1969, 186). He also notes the stigmatization


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that was beginning to be applied to the Newars by their conquerors, "their courage is at present spoken of very slightingly by the Purbutties [Parbatiyas, or "mountain people"]" and, he notes, "Instances of their being employed in the armies of the state are exceedingly rare. Their occupations are chiefly those of agriculture, besides which they almost exclusively execute all the arts and manufactures known in this country" (ibid., 186).

Ambrose Oldfield, writing of Nepal in 1880, has some notes on Bhaktapur. He echoes Kirkpatrick's favorable comparison of Bhaktapur's condition with Kathmandu and Patan, which he attributed to a relative leniency of the Gorkhalis toward Bhaktapur (Oldfield [1880] 1974, vol. I., p. 132f.):

The great majority of its inhabitants being Hindus, the Gorkha King—himself a bigoted Hindu—appears to have respected their temples, and to have restrained his followers from committing any flagrant or open violence against the public buildings with which the city abounded. Prithi Narayan may also have felt some sympathy for the fallen fortunes of his former ally, Ranjit Mall, whose applications for assistance against the Kings of Kathmandu and Patan had been the immediate cause of bringing Gorkha into the territories of Nipal. From these various causes the aged King of Bhatgaon was treated by Prithi Narayan with considerable leniency; his capital was respected, and though the Gorkhas . . . appropriated the entire revenues of the state, and the greater portion of those of the church, yet they fortunately spared enough of the latter to enable the Niwars to keep the majority of their temples in a state of very good repair. It is in consequence of this unusual moderation on the part of the Gorkhas that, in comparison with Patan or Kirtipur, Bhatgaon still presents a flourishing appearance; its streets and inhabitants have a cheerful aspect, and its religious edifices generally are, even at the present day, in fairly good preservation.

Nevertheless, he notes, "the ancient walls and gateways of Bhatgaon, like those of the other capital cities, are fast crumbling into ruin" (ibid., 133).

Forty years later, in the 1920s, Perceval Landon ([1928] 1976, vol. 1, p. 219f.) wrote:

A little apart from the main traffic ways of the Valley, and busy with its own concerns, Bhatgaon has retained an individuality and an aloofness that other towns in the Valley have to some extent lost in the ever-growing influence of Kathmandu—and naturally none has lost it more than Kathmandu herself. it is commonly said that m her daily life Bhatgaon resembles the outlying and, to Europeans, unknown parts of Nepal more than does any other town in the Valley. She rests upon the fold above her curving river cliff, adjusting herself to its couch-like shape, and cultivates her well-watered fields below,


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remote—willingly remote—from her neighbors, and one of the most picturesque towns in the East.


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