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...
Sansar Chand With O'Brien (Source: Chandigarh Museum and Art Gallery) Going through some Kangra paintings, I was a little surprised to see a man dressed like a British soldier serving the great monarch of Kangra Maharaja Sansar Chand Katoch. This was quite surprising, given the period’s turbulence and the ongoing tussles of the Lahore Darbar, to which he was also a feudatory, and the British East India Company (EIC). The painting, on prominent display in the Chandigarh Museum and Art Gallery, actually turned up in my searches as a result of their official handle’s tweet that mentioned briefly his contribution (on a side note, do follow for some wonderful material they tweet out time to time). 'Sansar Chand and O'Brien',Kangra,c.1810(240) O’Brien was described as “a European adventurer...who established a factory of small arms and raised a disciplined force of 1400 men” for the raja #kangra #portrait #painting #pahari #arthistory #indianart #history #royalty #...