Ancient Nepal History
It is also believed that Ramayan, a great Hindus was composed at the bank of Saptagandaki River. Ved Vyasa, the composer of Mahabharat also lived here. Ved Vyasa have Vyasa municipality damauli proves this belief.
In ancient times, Kathmandu valley consisted of a big lake. It was called Nagakaha (lake of serpents) as it was the habitat of Nagas i.e. serpents: it’s believed that a sage called Bipaswi. Bukkha who lived on the Nagarjun hill in the northwest corner of Nagdaha sowed a lotus seed, in the lake on the full moon day, from which a lotus flower grew after 6 month of the same day. Amazingly an image of swambhu appeared in the flower. Biswapi began to worship the image when it threw bright rays of light.
According to swambhu puran, Manjushree came down from China and worship lord swambhu. He drained out thee water of Nagadha. A beautiful valley with black and fertile soil appeared where Manjushree asked his disciples to settle in there. Dharmakar was made the king of the valley. The population of the valley now known as Kathmandu valley, increased as time passed by. People from different places came and settled here. Later on Dharmadutta came from south India. It’s believed that Dharmadatta brought with him the four castes of people and settled in Kathmandu. Thus, the caste system in Nepal was introduced. The four castes were Brahmin, Kshetriya, Baishya, Sudra. Its also believed Dharmakar was the one who built pashupatinath temple.
Danam, a demon over powered kathmandu valley and drove out the valley filled with water and turned into a lake. Its said lard Krishna heard this and came from Mathura and killed the demon. Lord Krishna married the daughter of Danmr. He drained out the water from the lake through a gorge at Chobhar. Lord Krishna belonged to the clan who reared cows. Indian cowherds came and settled in Kathmandu where population dot increased. A new dynasty, Gopal in Sanskrit ‘GO’=cow ‘Pal’=keeper cowherds began to make over kathmandu. Bhuktaman was the first king of Gopal Dynasty or Ahir Gopal dynasty ruled for 621 years. It was replaced by another dynasty called Mahispal or Abhir. The word Mahispal means those who rear buffaloes. Three kings of this dynasty were able to rule in Nepal, Basasimha, Jayamati Simha, Bhuvan simha.
Kirants invaded Kathmandu and started their rule in Nepal. In the past Kathmandu was called Nepal each of them as synonym. Kathmandu valley was known as Nepal Khaldo (valley) still some people in the villages; remote areas of the country use the word Nepal for Kathmandu. Apart form kathmandu there were some other powerful kingdom in Nepal like Simrangarh, Palpa, Jumla, Doti etc. However the authentic records of history of ancient period os available the history on supposition as been drawn on the basis of religion book. Legends. Chronologies, the ancient period has been called the pre-historic period. Check
Neolithic tools found in the Kathmandu Valley indicate that people were living in the Himalayan region in the distant past, although their culture and artifacts are only slowly being explored. Written references to this region appeared only by the first millennium B.C. During that period, political or social groupings in Nepal became known in north India. The Mahabharata and other legendary Indian histories mention the Kiratas (see Glossary), who still inhabited eastern Nepal in 1991. Some legendary sources from the Kathmandu Valley also describe the Kiratas as early rulers there, taking over from earlier Gopals or Abhiras, both of whom may have been cow herding tribes. These sources agree that an original population, probably of Tibeto-Burman ethnicity, lived in Nepal 2,500 years ago, inhabiting small settlements with a relatively low degree of political centralization.
Monumental changes occurred when groups of tribes calling themselves the Arya migrated into northwest India between 2000 B.C. and 1500 B.C. By the first millennium B.C., their culture had spread throughout northern India. Their many small kingdoms were constantly at war amid the dynamic religious and cultural environment of early Hinduism (see Hinduism, ch. 2). By 500 B.C., a cosmopolitan society was growing around urban sites linked by trade routes that stretched throughout South Asia and beyond. On the edges of the Gangetic Plain, in the Tarai Region, smaller kingdoms or confederations of tribes grew up, responding to dangers from larger kingdoms and opportunities for trade. It is probable that slow and steady migration of Khasa (see Glossary) peoples speaking Indo-Aryan languages was occurring in western Nepal during this period; this movement of peoples would continue, in fact, until modern times and expand to include the eastern Tarai as well.
One of the early confederations of the Tarai was the Sakya clan, whose seat apparently was Kapilavastu, near Nepal’s present-day border with India. Their most renowned son was Siddhartha Gautama (ca. 563-483 B.C.), a prince who rejected the world to search for the meaning of existence and became known as the Buddha, or the Enlightened One. The earliest stories of his life recount his wanderings in the area stretching from the Tarai to Banaras on the Ganges River and into modern Bihar State in India, where he found enlightenment at Gaya–still the site of one of the greatest Buddhist shrines. After his death and cremation, his ashes were distributed among some of the major kingdoms and confederations and were enshrined under mounds of earth or stone called stupas. Certainly, his religion was known at a very early date in Nepal through the Buddha’s ministry and the activities of his disciples.
The political struggles and urbanization of north India culminated in the great Mauryan Empire, which at its height under Ashoka (reigned 268-31 B.C.) covered almost all of South Asia and stretched into Afghanistan in the west. There is no proof that Nepal was ever included in the empire, although records of Ashoka are located at Lumbini, the Buddha’s birthplace, in the Tarai. But the empire had important cultural and political consequences for Nepal. First, Ashoka himself embraced Buddhism, and during his time the religion must have become established in the Kathmandu Valley and throughout much of Nepal. Ashoka was known as a great builder of stupas, and his archaic style is preserved in four mounds on the outskirts of Patan (now often referred to as Lalitpur), which were locally called Ashok stupas, and possibly in the Svayambhunath (or Swayambhunath) stupa. Second, along with religion came an entire cultural style centered on the king as the upholder of dharma, or the cosmic law of the universe. This political concept of the king as the righteous center of the political system had a powerful impact on all later South Asian governments and continued to play a major role in modern Nepal.
The Mauryan Empire declined after the second century B.C., and north India entered a period of political disunity. The extended urban and commercial systems expanded to include much of Inner Asia, however, and close contacts were maintained with European merchants. Nepal was apparently a distant part of this commercial network because even Ptolemy and other Greek writers of the second century knew of the Kiratas as a people who lived near China. The Gupta emperors united North India again in the fourth century. Their capital was the old Mauryan center of Pataliputra (presentday Patna in Bihar State), during what Indian writers often describe as a golden age of artistic and cultural creativity. The greatest conqueror of this dynasty was Samudragupta (reigned ca. 353-73), who claimed that the “lord of Nepal” paid him taxes and tribute and obeyed his commands. It still is impossible to tell who this lord may have been, what area he ruled, and if he was really a subordinate of the Guptas. Some of the earliest examples of Nepalese art show that the culture of north India during Gupta times exercised a decisive influence on Nepali language, religion, and artistic expression.
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