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Before the Great Invasion: Sansar Chand, the Gorkhas and an Earlier Conflict in the Western Hills

Sansar Chand Katoch portrait The Gorkha invasion of Kangra in 1805–06 is a fairly well-known episode in the history of the western Himalayan states. The campaign, that eventually brought Raja Sansar Chand's ambitions to a halt and led to his decline, has been discussed in multiple historical accounts. Yet, while going through some older writings on the history of Nepal, I came across an account that seems to suggest that the confrontation between the Katochs and the Gorkhas was not a one-off; it was one of the multiple confrontations that had occurred, arising from a variety of reasons. The account appears in Ludwig F. Stiller's The Rise of the House of Gorkha: A Study in the Unification of Nepal, 1768–1816 (1973) , which draws upon Francis Buchanan-Hamilton's earlier An Account of the Kingdom of Nepal (1819) . The story begins not with the Gorkhas, but with Sansar Chand's growing influence in the region. Hamilton wrote that after the demise of Dharma Prakash, who had d...
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Akhnoor's History and the Forgotten Links with South India

Remains of Harappan Era Site (?) at Manda- courtesy Indian Columbus

Akhnoor is a city located in Jammu division of Jammu and Kashmir. It is clearly the oldest inhabited city of the Jammu region, which goes long back to the Harappan era. Only in in the past four or five decades has the notion of Jammu not having any antiquity associated with it changed. Sukhdev Singh Charak in his book A Short History of Jammu Raj highlights several interesting aspects about this town, where he briefly shed light on several findings of the Charles Fabri expedition in the area, of which little is remembered in India, as Harappan era association even today mostly focuses itself on sites in Pakistan and a few huge sites in India.The site of Manda, at Akhnur, and recent excavations within the premises of the fort have shown the existence of .Harappan, late Harappan red ware, gray ware and black slipped ware'. The site of Manda also revealed things like double spiral headed pin, terracotta bangles and bone arrow heads among other items.



Kameshwar Temple, Akhnoor (courtesy: Famous Places India)
An interesting thing of this area is the presence of a temple that has undergone much renovation, but is believed to have been an important pilgrim cite for centuries if not millenia. The Kameshwara temple is a Saivic spot, which traces its origins back to the Mahabharata era, assumed to be the place where Barbareek's body fell. Except for the pindis and a few odd statues, hardly anything may be considered of antiquity at the present site. However, the compound of the temple revealed interesting shell-inscriptions on pebbles, which were pilgrim records that go back to 6-7th century AD. As pointed out by Charak:

"These are the pilgrim records, engraved in the southern ornamental characters - the so-called conch shell script...The inscriptions mention names of pilgrims like Bahu-vijneya, Sukhigamti, Mahiso, Bhupamgama, Nahusha, and Balasrayavirya."

Courtesy - Directorate of Archaeology, Archives and Museums, Govt of Jammu and Kashmir
These records are proof that ardent Saivic devotees of the South used to come all the way to Akhnoor, and this place may have been a major pilgrim centre of the time, and must have certainly housed a 'great and famous Siva shrine' . These can be found today in the Dogra Art Museum in Jammu city, which is a pale shadow of an attempt to preserve the region's history sadly.

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