The earliest inhabitants of modern Nepal and adjoining areas are believed to be Australoid people. By 4000 BCE, the Tibeto-Burmese people had reached Nepal either directly across the Himalayas from Tibet or via Myanmar and north-east India or both.[1] By the late Vedic period, Nepal was being mentioned in various Hindu texts, such as the late Vedic Atharvaveda Pariśiṣṭa and in the post-Vedic Atharvashirsha Upanishad.[2] The Gopal Bansa was the oldest dynasty to be mentioned in various texts as the earliest rulers of the central Himalayan kingdom known by the name 'Nepal'.[3] The Gopalas were followed by Kiratas who ruled for over 16 centuries by some accounts.[4] According to the Mahabharata, the then Kirata king went to take part in the Battle of Kurukshetra. In the south-eastern region, Janakpurdham was the capital of the prosperous kingdom of Videha or Mithila, that extended down to the Ganges, and home to King Janaka and his daughter, Sita.
Around 600 BCE, small kingdoms and confederations of clans arose in the southern regions of Nepal. From one of these, the Shakya polity, arose a prince who later renounced his status to lead an ascetic life, founded Buddhism, and came to be known as Gautama Buddha (traditionally dated 563–483 BCE).[5] Nepal came to be established as a land of spirituality and refuge in the intervening centuries, played an important role in transmitting Buddhism to East Asia via Tibet,[6] and helped preserve Hindu and Buddhist manuscripts.
By 250 BCE, the southern regions had come under the influence of the Maurya Empire. Emperor Ashoka made a pilgrimage to Lumbini and erected a pillar at Buddha's birthplace, the inscriptions on which mark the starting point for properly recorded history of Nepal.[7] Ashoka also visited the Kathmandu valley and built monuments commemorating Gautama Buddha's visit there. By the 4th century AD, much of Nepal was under the influence of the Gupta Empire.[a][8]
In the Kathmandu valley, the Kiratas were pushed eastward by the Licchavis, and the Licchavi dynasty came into power c. 400 AD. The Lichchhavis built monuments and left a series of inscriptions; Nepal's history of the period is pieced together almost entirely from them.[9][6] The Licchavi dynasty went into decline in the late 8th century and was followed by a Thakuri rule. Thakuri kings ruled over the country up to the middle of the 11th century AD; not much is known of this period that is often called the dark period.[10]
^Wang, Hua-Wei; Li, Yu-Chun; Sun, Fei; Zhao, Mian; Mitra, Bikash; Chaudhuri, Tapas Kumar; Regmi, Pasupati; Wu, Shi-Fang; Kong, Qing-Peng; Zhang, Ya-Ping (April 2012). "Revisiting the role of the Himalayas in peopling Nepal: insights from mitochondrial genomes". Journal of Human Genetics. 57 (4): 228–234. doi:10.1038/jhg.2012.8. ISSN 1435-232X. PMID 22437208.
^P. 17 Looking to the Future: Indo-Nepal Relations in Perspective By Lok Raj Baral
^Sudarshan Raj Tiwari (2001). The Ancient Settlements of the Kathmandu Valley. Centre for Nepal and Asian Studies, Tribhuvan University. p. 17. ISBN 978-99933-52-07-5.
^Nepal Antiquary. Office of the Nepal Antiquary. 1978. p. 7.
^Klaus K. Klostermaier (2007). A Survey of Hinduism: Second Edition. SUNY Press. p. 482. ISBN 978-1-4384-0933-7.
^ abRose, Leo E.; Scholz, John T. (1980). Nepal: profile of a Himalayan kingdom. Westview Press. ISBN 978-0-89158-651-7.
^Landon 1928, p. 11.
^Kunal Chakrabarti; Shubhra Chakrabarti (2013). Historical Dictionary of the Bengalis. Scarecrow Press. p. 9. ISBN 978-0-8108-8024-5.
^Landon 1928, p. 19.
^"Nepal Monarchy: Thakuri Dynasty". royalnepal.synthasite.com. Archived from the original on 30 December 2014. Retrieved 17 December 2014.
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