Prithvi Narayan Shah: The King Who Unified Nepal

Prithvi Narayan Shah (Nepali: पृथ्वीनारायण शाह) was born on 11 January 1723 (Poush 27, 1779 Bikram Sambat) in the Gorkha Palace to King Nara Bhupal Shah of the Shah dynasty. Gorkha at the time was a small, poor hill kingdom in west-central Nepal, one of dozens of petty states scattered across the middle hills. He ascended the Gorkha throne on 3 April 1743, aged about 20, inheriting his father's ambition to expand toward the wealthy Kathmandu Valley.

The Kathmandu Valley in the mid-18th century was divided among three rival Malla kingdoms, Kathmandu, Patan (Lalitpur) and Bhaktapur (Bhadgaon), whose rulers were frequently at war with one another. Beyond the valley, the western hills were split into two loose confederations of principalities: the Chaubisi Rajya (the 'twenty-four kingdoms' of the Gandaki region, which included Gorkha, Kaski, Lamjung, Tanahun and Palpa) and the Baise Rajya (the 'twenty-two kingdoms' of the Karnali region such as Jumla, Jajarkot and Salyan). This political fragmentation is what Prithvi Narayan Shah set out to overcome.

He is universally credited as the founder of modern Nepal and the first king of the unified Nepali state, a nation-building achievement taught in every Nepali school. He died on 11 January 1775 at Devighat in Nuwakot district, aged 52, having laid the territorial and ideological foundations of the country his successors would continue to expand.

Prithvi Narayan Shah recognised early that Gorkha alone could not overwhelm the rich Kathmandu Valley, so he pursued a patient, decades-long strategy of encircling the valley and cutting its trade lifelines with Tibet and India. His first major prize was Nuwakot, a strategic trading post on the Kathmandu-Tibet route: after a failed attempt in 1743, he captured it in 1744, giving Gorkha a foothold on the valley's northern approaches.

The campaign was neither quick nor bloodless. The fortified town of Kirtipur, guarding the valley's southwestern edge, resisted fiercely, defeating Gorkhali assaults in 1757 and 1764 before finally falling in March 1766 after a prolonged blockade. To the east and south, he defeated the ruler of Makwanpur in 1762 and, in January 1763, repelled forces sent by the Nawab of Bengal. By methodically seizing the passes and hills around the valley, Prithvi Narayan Shah imposed an economic blockade that slowly strangled the Malla capitals.

This war of attrition reflected a deliberate doctrine of gradual, self-reliant expansion rather than a single decisive battle. Prithvi Narayan Shah preferred to isolate his targets, win over local chiefs, and strike only when an adversary was weakened, an approach that let a poor hill state ultimately absorb far wealthier rivals.

The decisive moment came on 25 September 1768, during Indra Jatra, one of the Kathmandu Valley's greatest festivals, when the city's residents, nobles and the Malla king were absorbed in days of processions, feasting and drinking. Gorkhali forces exploited the distraction to enter Kathmandu with little organised resistance, and Prithvi Narayan Shah proclaimed himself king of the city on the same day. In a widely retold detail, he is said to have taken his seat during the festival's climactic display of the living goddess Kumari.

The fall of Kathmandu triggered the rapid collapse of the other Malla states. Patan (Lalitpur) surrendered in October 1768, and Bhaktapur, the last of the three kingdoms, fell in November 1769, completing the conquest of the entire Kathmandu Valley. Prithvi Narayan Shah moved his capital from Gorkha to Kathmandu, establishing it as the seat of the new unified kingdom, a status the city holds to this day.

An earlier attempt by the Malla king of Kathmandu to break the siege with outside help had already failed. In 1767 the British East India Company dispatched a military expedition under Captain George Kinloch to relieve the valley, but the force was defeated at Sindhuli Gadhi in the malarial foothills, an early Gorkhali victory over a European army that hardened Prithvi Narayan Shah's suspicion of foreign powers.

Toward the end of his life, around 1774-1775, Prithvi Narayan Shah is said to have dictated a set of political, economic, military and moral instructions to his courtiers and priests. This body of counsel is known as the Dibya Upadesh (also spelled Divyopadesh), literally 'divine counsel' or 'sacred instruction'. It functions as a founding political testament of the Nepali state, covering statecraft, defence, trade, administration and the character expected of rulers and subjects.

The text advocates economic nationalism and self-reliance: it warns against letting foreign merchants dominate Nepali commerce, urges the promotion of home-grown industry and textiles, and counsels rulers to keep the country's wealth within its borders. It also famously describes Nepal as a garden of many castes and communities, an image often cited today in debates over Nepal's multi-ethnic identity, though the historical Shah state was firmly Hindu in orientation.

It is important to note that the authenticity and exact wording of the Dibya Upadesh are debated by historians. The counsel was transmitted orally and through manuscripts and was only published in book form in the 1950s, roughly 180 years after his death. Some scholars regard it as a broadly faithful record of his outlook, while others argue that parts were shaped or embellished later to legitimise the Shah dynasty and construct a nationalist narrative. Readers should treat specific quotations with appropriate caution.

The single most quoted line attributed to Prithvi Narayan Shah is his description of Nepal as a 'yam between two boulders' (Nepali: दुई ढुङ्गाबीचको तरुल). The two boulders are Nepal's giant neighbours: to the north the Chinese empire (then Qing China, controlling Tibet) and to the south the expanding British-Indian power represented by the East India Company. The image captures the enduring geopolitical reality that a small, landlocked Himalayan state must survive between two much larger powers.

The metaphor is not merely descriptive but prescriptive. Prithvi Narayan Shah counselled maintaining treaties of friendship with both neighbours while avoiding entanglement with, or dependence on, either one. The underlying doctrine emphasises caution, balance, self-reliance and the careful preservation of sovereignty, principles that have shaped Nepali foreign policy thinking for more than two centuries.

The 'yam between two boulders' phrase remains a staple of Nepali political and diplomatic discourse today, invoked in newspaper columns and parliamentary debates whenever Nepal navigates its relationships with India and China. Some modern commentators argue Nepal should reframe itself as a 'bridge' or 'buffer' rather than a vulnerable yam, but the original metaphor endures as shorthand for the country's strategic dilemma.

Prithvi Narayan Shah's birthday, Poush 27 in the Bikram Sambat calendar (around 11 January), is observed as Prithvi Jayanti and is also marked as Rashtriya Ekata Diwas (National Unity Day). The day honours his role in forging a single Nepali nation out of dozens of small states and is an occasion for speeches, floral tributes at his statues, and public reflection on national unity.

The holiday's status has followed Nepal's political turns. Prithvi Jayanti was celebrated as an official public holiday for decades under the monarchy, but after the People's Movement and the abolition of the monarchy, it was dropped from the national holiday calendar when Nepal became a federal republic in 2008. For years afterward, pro-monarchy and nationalist groups campaigned for its restoration.

In 2023, following pressure from the pro-monarchy Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP), whose support the coalition government sought, the government reinstated Prithvi Jayanti as a public holiday for the first time in about 15 years. The day therefore sits at the heart of a live political and cultural debate over how republican Nepal should remember its founding king.

Prithvi Narayan Shah's legacy is genuinely contested, and a balanced reference should present both sides. Admirers hail him as the visionary unifier and founder of modern Nepal, the leader who protected Himalayan states from colonial absorption and gave a fragmented region a common national identity, army and capital. In this telling he is the 'father of the nation', and his self-description of the realm as 'Asal Hindustan' (a genuine or pure Hindu land) is read as a stand against foreign and colonial domination.

Critics, however, point to the human cost of conquest and to the exclusions built into the state he founded. The most cited example is Kirtipur, whose residents, according to some contemporary missionary accounts, were brutally punished after their long resistance, with claims that noses or lips were cut off. The scale of this atrocity is disputed: some historians argue the accounts are exaggerated or that punishment fell on a few individuals rather than the whole population, but the episode remains a painful memory locally and a symbol of unification's violence.

A further critique is that the unified Hindu kingdom entrenched the dominance of high-caste hill groups and marginalised many ethnic (Janajati), Madhesi and lower-caste communities, tensions that resurfaced sharply during Nepal's move to a federal republic. Modern Nepali historiography increasingly treats Prithvi Narayan Shah neither as a flawless hero nor a villain, but as a pivotal state-builder whose achievements and costs are both part of the national story.