इतिवृत्त
76+ events across ~3,000 years. Filter by era, or simply scroll through the whole story of Nepal.
Legend holds that the Kathmandu Valley was once a lake, until the bodhisattva Manjushri cut a gorge at Chobar with his flaming sword — draining the water and revealing habitable land.
Prince Siddhartha Gautama is born to King Suddhodana of the Shakya clan in the gardens of Lumbini, in the southern Terai. His teaching will one day make Nepal a crossroads of world religion.
The Mauryan emperor Ashoka makes a pilgrimage to Lumbini and erects a stone pillar marking the Buddha's birthplace — the oldest dated monument in Nepal, and the external proof of the birth legend.
According to the Gopalarajavamshavali chronicle, the first rulers of Kathmandu Valley were the Gopal (cow-herding) dynasty — eight kings ruling from Matatirtha, starting with a cowherd elected for his justice.
The Gopal line ends with its eighth king, Yakshagupta — traditionally the moment when the Valley's rule passes to its next dynasty.
The Abhira Mahispal (buffalo-herding) dynasty succeeds the Gopals, ruling the Valley for three kings — the second chapter of the chronicle's herding-founder sequence.
The Mahispal line, like the Gopals before it, ends in defeat — opening the Valley to the Kirat armies arriving from the east.
Yalambar, first of the Kirat kings, defeats the last Mahispal ruler and founds a dynasty that, by some counts, ruled the Valley for nearly a thousand years.
Legend makes a Kirat king — Yalambar, or 'Akash Bhairav' — an ally or warrior in the great Mahabharata war. His idol is still displayed in Kathmandu each Indra Jatra.
An aristocratic clan tracing its lineage to Vaishali in Bihar enters the Valley, growing in power under late Kirat rule — the seed of the Licchavi dynasty.
After 32 kings by the Gopalarajavamshavali count (29 by Wright's list), the last Kirat king is overthrown — by the Lichchhavis, or in some accounts pushed out by Soma dynasty usurpers.
The Lichchhavi clan takes the Valley's throne and builds Nepal's first literate, state-run civilization — kings, castes, taxes and temples, recorded in stone.
King Manadeva erects the Changu Narayan pillar — Nepal's oldest dated inscription, recording his conquests and genealogy. Every Nepali chronology is anchored to this stone.
The Brahmin chancellor Amsuvarman seizes royal power in his own right, founding a short dynasty that will link Nepal to both India and Tibet.
A Nepali princess — remembered as Bhrikuti — is married to Songtsen Gampo of Tibet, carrying Buddhism, icons and Newari craft over the Himalayas.
The pilgrim Xuanzang's account and Tang dynasty annals describe Nepal and its ruler Amsuvarman — the first Chinese written testimony to the kingdom.
Jayadeva II's charters — the Gopalcandra stone — mark the flowering and the closing pages of Licchavi epigraphy.
The trader Shankhadhar Sakhwa clears every debt in the Valley, and the people start counting years anew — Nepal Sambat, a calendar the Newar community keeps to this day.
After Licchavi's fall, new dynasties centered on Nuwakot and Kathmandu rule a smaller, fragmented Valley kingdom — the Thakuri age.
In the western hills, the Khas Malla kings build their own realm — the ancestry of today's Khas-Arya population and the Nepali heartland.
The Karnata dynasty rules the Mithila plains on Nepal's southern border, its courts and scholars feeding the Valley's Sanskrit culture.
Arimalla takes Kathmandu and begins three centuries of Malla rule — the dynasty that built the Valley's squares, temples and festivals.
A catastrophic earthquake kills an estimated one-third of the Valley's population — including King Abhaya Malla himself.
Shamsuddin Ilyas Shah of Bengal raids Kathmandu — the first documented foreign army in the Valley — burning temples and carrying off plunder across several campaigns (1345–49).
Jayasthiti Malla seizes effective rule in Bhaktapur and, through law, art and marriage, becomes the Valley's unifying king — the 'Nepal Bhasa renaissance' begins.
The Mulukichiti reforms formalize caste, festivals, architecture and trade — a legal-cultural charter that shaped Newar society for the next six centuries.
Yaksha Malla's sons split the kingdom into Bhaktapur and Kathmandu; Patan follows soon after. Three rival Malla courts will spend the next 280 years out-building each other.
The elder son Raya Malla rules Bhaktapur; his brother Ratna Malla breaks off and takes Kathmandu — the formal birth of the two-city kingdom system.
Siddhi Narsingh Malla makes Lalitpur (Patan) an independent court, opening the golden age of the three cities.
Pratap Malla rules Kathmandu at its peak — the Krishnamandir, the Rani Pokhari, multilingual inscriptions and a court open to Tibet, India and the West.
Ranjit Malla of Bhaktapur — learned, beloved, and increasingly broke — rules the last of the three Malla courts before the Gurkhas arrive.
The king of small Gorkha captures Nuwakot, the Valley's western gate — the first move of a 25-year campaign that will end the Malla world.
After years of defiance and one massacre of its defenders, the fortress town of Kirtipur submits to Gorkha — remembered in legend for the cutting of noses of its men.
While the Valley celebrates Indra Jatra, Prithvi Narayan Shah's army storms Kathmandu — the founding act of the modern Nepali state.
Within a year the remaining Malla capitals surrender; the whole Valley — and with it the campaign of unification — is in Shah hands.
Prithvi Narayan's testament — 'Nepal is a garden of four castes and thirty-six sub-castes' — defines the state's founding philosophy of unity and neutrality.
Chinese forces intervene in Tibet, push the Gorkha armies back, and impose a tribute relationship that formalizes Nepal's place between two empires.
The East India Company, provoked by border disputes and Nepal's expansion, declares war on Gorkha — the defining military contest of the age.
Nepal cedes a third of its territory — the Terai west of the Rapti, Kumaon, Garhwal and Sikkim — and accepts a British Resident. Its map, and its two giant neighbors, are fixed to this day.
Prime Minister Bhimsen Thapa builds the nine-storey tower — a landmark that will survive two centuries, and two earthquakes, before falling in 2015.
In a single night of gunfire in the palace courtyard of Kathmandu, Jung Bahadur Rana eliminates the old nobility and makes the prime ministership hereditary in his own family — for the next 104 years the kings rule in name only.
Jung Bahadur's National Code of Nepal — the first written legal code — freezes a multilingual, multiethnic society into a single hierarchy of castes and races.
Nepal invades Tibet and extracts the Thapathali Treaty — trade concessions and a Tibetan indemnity — the last great military win of the Rana age.
Prince Amar Bikram Shah, a royal heir of the Shah line, is executed by the Rana regime for conspiring against it.
The 'reformist Rana' pushes schools, a free press and compulsory education, and is removed by his brothers in a hundred days — the era's near-miss.
Over both world wars, nearly 200,000 Gurkhas fight for Britain — the mountain's name becomes a global military brand, at the cost of a generation of remittance widows.
Britain formally recognizes Nepal's independence — a diplomatic shield the Ranas use to close the country to all other contact.
The first political party of Nepal is founded in Kathmandu — an underground circle of ordinary citizens and one ex-soldier, plotting the end of Rana rule.
Shukraraj Shastri, Dharma Bhakta Mathema, Dasharath Chand and Gangalal Shrestha are hanged in public — their deaths galvanize the generation that will end the Ranas.
Under pressure from the palace, India and the armed revolution, the last Rana prime minister yields; King Tribhuvan returns to Kathmandu a constitutional monarch.
Under the 1959 constitution, Nepal elects its first parliament; B.P. Koirala of the Nepali Congress becomes the country's first elected prime minister.
Mahendra arrests the cabinet, dissolves parliament and bans political parties — replacing democracy with the Panchayat system of his own design.
Nepal is declared a sovereign Hindu monarchy under a four-tier, partyless council system — one language, one dress, one king's veto.
King Birendra proposes that the Himalayan buffer between India and China be recognized as a neutral zone; 112 countries endorse it, India refuses.
Nepal's first national referendum asks: reformed Panchayat or multiparty democracy? The Panchayat wins 54.7% — barely — and the pressure keeps building.
A 13-month economic blockade empties Nepal's stores and brings the Panchayat regime to its knees — the prologue to 1990.
Street protests across the country force King Birendra to lift the Panchayat ban; a new constitution makes the king a constitutional monarch and multiparty democracy the law.
The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) launches an armed insurrection from the mid-western hills — the start of a ten-year war that will kill some 17,000 people.
Crown Prince Dipendra kills King Birendra, Queen Aishwarya and eight members of the royal family at a Friday dinner in Narayanhiti, then dies of his wounds. The monarchy never recovers its authority.
The new king dissolves the government, sacks the prime minister and takes direct rule — a miscalculation that unites the democratic parties and the Maoist rebels against him.
Nineteen days of nationwide protest bring the king to his knees; parliament is restored and the Maoists declare a ceasefire.
Seven parties and the Maoists sign the peace accord in Kathmandu — ending a decade of war, and agreeing to draft a new constitution through an elected Assembly.
Against the forecasts, the former Maoist rebels win the most seats in Nepal's first Constituent Assembly — the people hand the pen to the fighters.
The Constituent Assembly votes 560–4 to abolish the monarchy; the 240-year-old Shah dynasty ends, and Nepal is declared a Federal Democratic Republic.
After four missed deadlines, the first Constituent Assembly is dissolved with no constitution in hand — federalism's question marks were too heavy to lift.
A magnitude 7.8 earthquake centered in Gorkha district kills 8,964 people, destroys over 600,000 houses and inflicts damage equal to a third of Nepal's GDP.
Signed by over 90% of the Assembly, the constitution declares Nepal a secular federal republic of seven provinces — drafted, for the first time, by an elected body.
An undeclared blockade of Nepal's southern border — following the constitution and India's objections to it — causes months of fuel, medicine and food shortages.
Nepal holds village, municipal and provincial elections under the new constitution — with turnouts the country has rarely seen, and a new generation of mayors entering politics.
Nepal records the first confirmed COVID-19 case outside China — a student returned from Wuhan. A nationwide lockdown holds the first wave; the 2021 Delta wave does not.
A rapper-turned-structural engineer wins the Kathmandu mayoralty by a landslide — the first sign that the new generation was ready to replace the old parties.
After the government bans 26 social media platforms, students and young workers pour into the streets; police fire kills at least 19 on the first day.
Protesters storm Singha Durbar and set fire to the Federal Parliament building; Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli resigns. At least 72 people die in two days of unrest.
Former Chief Justice Sushila Karki — Nepal's first woman Chief Justice — is appointed interim prime minister, with a single mandate: restore order and hold an election.
Nepal votes for a new House of Representatives. The Rastriya Swatantra Party, the party of the new politics, wins a landslide — 182 of 275 seats.
The mayor of Kathmandu, the face of the uprising, takes the oath of office — the youngest prime minister in Nepal's recorded history.