Place · Newar hill town · Nepal
Kirtipur
Also known as Kirtipur, Kipu, Naskatipur, Bagh Bhairab
A Newar town on a ridge south-west of Kathmandu, walled, with the Bagh Bhairab temple at its centre, which held out against Prithvi Narayan Shah's Gorkhali army through three sieges before it fell in 1767 — the last real resistance to the unification of Nepal.
- Function
- Military & resistance
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 27.678, 85.278
Worth knowing
The reprisal is the thing the town is remembered for: the chronicles record that the noses and lips of much of the male population were cut off on the king's order, and that the town was renamed Naskatipur, the town of cut noses. It is the founding atrocity of the Nepali state, and it is recorded in Nepal's own sources rather than a foreign one.
Connections (1)
- CampaignGorkha
Kirtipur held out against Prithvi Narayan Shah through three sieges before falling in 1767, and the chronicles record that the noses and lips of much of the male population were then cut off on his order and the town renamed Naskatipur. It is the founding atrocity of the Nepali state and it is recorded in Nepal's own sources, not a foreign one.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Kirtipur”. Father Giuseppe's contemporary account in Asiatick Researches vol. II (1790); Ludwig Stiller, The Rise of the House of Gorkha (1973).
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