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...
Panchvaktar Temple of Jammu (Courtesy Amar Ujala) Raja Mal Dev of Jammu of the Dev Dynasty was perhaps one of the greatest rulers of Jammu. At the time of his ascension to the throne, there was a dramatic shift in the geopolitics of North-west India. The Tughlaq control on the throne of Delhi had weakened considerably, and in any case times were difficult for the native Hindus of the region in general. In such a scenario, Timur , the slaughterer, has turned up in India, attracted by the riches and his desire to be called the greatest general. Having created a mountain of "kafir" Hindu skulls in Delhi, he had gone towards Haridwar, causing further chaos and bloodshed there as well of the pilgrims who had come to take a dip in the Ganga. Ascending the throne in 1347 AD, Mal Dev had succeeded Jodh Dev, and was noted for good physical prowess, especially his ability to carry huge boulders upwards from the Tawi River basin. His rule actually saw the twenty two principalit...