Prithvi Narayan Shah

Who is Prithvi Narayan Shah?

Prithvi Narayan Shah was the ninth king of the small Gorkha Kingdom and is remembered as the founding monarch of the unified Kingdom of Nepal. Born on 11 January 1723, he ascended the Gorkha throne in 1743 and spent the following decades pursuing a determined campaign to bring the fragmented hill principalities and the three Malla kingdoms of the Kathmandu Valley — Kathmandu, Patan, and Bhaktapur — under a single crown, completing the conquest of the valley by 1769. His reign forged the territorial and political foundation of the modern Nepali state and earned him the enduring title "Father of the Nation." He is equally remembered for his Dibya Upadesh ("Divine Counsel"), a set of political and moral instructions delivered near the end of his life, in which he described Nepal as "a garden of four castes and thirty-six sub-castes" and urged the rulers who followed him to protect the country's independence and diversity. He died in January 1775, reportedly on his own birthday.

Sources: Prithvi Narayan Shah — Wikipedia · Britannica, "Prithvi Narayan Shah" · Dibya Upadesh (Divine Counsel), attributed political testament