NEPAL, a kingdom of India, situated to the north-east of the city of Patna, at the distance of ten or twelve days journey. Within the distance of four days journey from Nepal the road is good in the plains of Hindostan, but in the mountains it is bad, narrow, and dangerous. At the foot of the hills the country is called Teriani; and there the air is very unwholesome from the middle of March to the middle of November; and people in their passage catch a disorder called in the language of that country aul; which is a putrid fever, and of which the generality of people, who are attacked with it, die in a few days; but on the plains there is no apprehension of it. Although the road be very narrow and inconvenient for three or four days at the passes of the hills, where it is necessary to cross and recross the river more than fifty times, yet, on reaching the interior mountain before you descend, you have an agreeable prospect of the extensive plain of Nepal, resembling an amphitheatre covered with populous towns and villages: the circumference of the plain is about 200 miles, a little irregular, and surrounded by hills on
all sides, so that no person can enter or come out of it without passing the mountains. Nepal.
There are three principal cities in the plain, each of which was the capital of an independent kingdom; the principal city of the three is situated to the northward of the plain, and is called Cat'hmandu; it contains about 18,000 houses; and this kingdom, from south to north, extends to the distance of twelve or thirteen days journey as far as the borders of Tibet, and is almost as extensive from east to west. The king of Cat'hmandu has always about 50,000 soldiers in his service. The second city to the south-west of Cat'hmandu is called Lelit Pattan; it contains near 24,000 houses. The third principal city to the east of Lelit Pattan is called B'hatgan; it contains about 12,000 families; and is the metropolis of a district which extends towards the east to the distance of five or six days journey; and borders upon another nation, also independent, called Giratas, who profess no religion. Besides these three principal cities, there are many other large and less considerable towns or fortresses; one of which is Timi, and another Gipoli, each of which contains about 8000 houses, and is very populous. All those towns, both great and small, are well built; the houses are constructed of brick, and are three or four stories high; their apartments are not lofty; they have doors and windows of wood well worked and arranged with great regularity. The streets of all their towns are paved with brick or stone, with a regular declivity to carry off the water. In almost every street of the capital towns there are also good wells made of stone, from which the water passes through several stone canals for the public benefit. In every town there are large square varandas well built, for the accommodation of travellers and the public; these varandas are called Pali; and there are also many of them, as well as wells, in different parts of the country for public use. There are also, on the outside of the great towns, small square reservoirs of water, faced with brick, with a good road to walk upon, and a large flight of steps for the convenience of those who choose to bathe.
The religion of Nepal is of two kinds: the more ancient is professed by many people who call themselves Baryesu; they pluck out all the hair from their heads; their dress is of coarse red woollen cloth, and they wear a cap of the same: they are considered as people of the religious order, and their religion prohibits them from marrying, as it is with the Lamas of Tibet, from which country their religion was originally brought; but in Nepal they do not observe this rule, except at their discretion. They have large monasteries, in which every one has a separate apartment or place of abode. They observe also particular festivals, the principal of which is called Tatra in their language, and continues a month or longer according to the pleasure of the king. The ceremony consists in drawing an idol, which at Lelit Pattan is called Baghero, in a large and richly ornamented car, covered with gilt copper: round about the idol stand the king and the principal Baryesu; and in this manner the vehicle is almost every day drawn thro' some one of the streets of the city by the inhabitants, who run about beating and playing upon every kind of instrument their country affords, which make an inconceivable noise.
The other religion, the more common of the two, is that of the Brahmins, and is the same as is followed in Hindostan, with the difference that, in the latter country the Hindus being mixed with the Mahomedans, their religion also abounds with many prejudices, and is not strictly observed; whereas in Nepal, where there are no Mussulmans (except one Cashmirian merchant), the Hindu religion is practised in its greatest purity: every day of the month they clasp under its proper name, when certain sacrifices are to be performed and certain prayers offered up in their temples: the places of worship are more in number in their towns than are to be found in the most populous and most flourishing cities of Christendom; many of them are magnificent according to their ideas of architecture, and constructed at a very considerable expence; some of them have four or five square cupolas, and in some of the temples two or three of the extreme cupolas, as well as the doors and windows of them, are decorated with gilt copper.
In the city of Lelit Pattan the temple of Baghero is more valuable, on account of the gold, silver, and jewels it contains, than even the house of the king. Besides the large temples, there are also many small ones, which have stairs, by which a single person may ascend, on the outside all around them; and some of those small temples have four sides, others six, with small stone or marble pillars polished very smooth, with two or three pyramidal stories, and all their ornaments well gilt, and neatly worked according to their ideas of taste. On the outside of some of their temples there are great square pillars of single stones from twenty to thirty feet high, upon which they place their idols superbly gilt. The greatest number of their temples have a good stone staircase in the middle of the four squares, and at the end of each flight of stairs there are lines cut out of stone on both sides: around about their temples there are also bells, which the people ring on particular occasions; and when they are at prayers, many cupolas are also quite filled with little bells hanging by cords in the inside about the distance of a foot from each other, which make a great noise on that quarter where the wind conveys the sound. There are not only superb temples in their great cities, but also within their castles.
To the eastward of Cat'hmandu, at the distance of about two or three miles, there is a place called Tolu, by which there flows a small river, the water of which is esteemed holy, according to their superstitious ideas, and thither they carry people of high rank, when they are thought to be at the point of death: at this place there is a temple, which is not inferior to the best and richest in any of the capital cities. They also have it on tradition, that at two or three places in Nepal valuable treasures are concealed under ground: one of those places they believe is Tolu; but no one is permitted to make use of them except the king, and that only in cases of necessity. Those treasures, they say, have been accumulated in this manner: When any temple had become very rich from the offerings of the people, it was destroyed, and deep vaults dug under ground one above another, in which the gold, silver, gilt copper, jewels, and every thing of value, were deposited. This was found to be actually the case when the missionary, from whose memoir this account of Nepal is taken, was at Cat'hmandu. One of the kings, or pretenders to the crown, who were then at war with each
other, being in the utmost distress for want of money to pay his troops, ordered the vaults at Tolu to be opened; and found in the first vault more money, besides silver and gold idols, than he had immediate occasion for.
To the westward also of the great city of Lelit Pattan, at the distance of only three miles, is a castle called Banga, in which there is a magnificent temple. No one of the missionaries ever entered into this castle; because the people who have the care of it, have such a scrupulous veneration for the temple, that no person is permitted to enter it with his shoes on; and the missionaries, unwilling to shew such respect to their false deities, never entered it. The author of this memoir, however, who acted as physician to the commandant, was of course admitted within the castle, and got a sight of the celebrated temple, which he declares, that for magnificence he believes superior to every thing in Europe.
Besides the magnificence of the temples, which their cities and towns contain, there are many other rarities. At Cat'hmandu, on one side of the royal garden, there is a large fountain, in which is one of their idols called Narayan. This idol is of blue stone, crowned and sleeping on a matras also of the same kind of stone, and the idol and the matras appear as floating upon the water. This stone machine is very large, being about 18 or 20 feet long, and broad in proportion, but well worked, and in good repair.
In a wall of the royal palace of Cat'hmandu, which is built upon the court before the palace, there is a great stone of a single piece, which is about fifteen feet long, and four or five feet thick; on the top of this great stone there are four square holes at equal distances from each other; in the inside of the wall they pour water into the holes; and in the court side, each hole having a closed canal, every person may draw water to drink. At the foot of the stone is a large ladder, by which people ascend to drink; but the curiosity of the stone consists in its being quite covered with characters of different languages cut upon it. Some lines contain the characters of the language of the country, others the characters of Tibet, others Persian, others Greek, besides several others of different nations; and in the middle there is a line of Roman characters, which appears in this form, AVTOMNEW INTER LHIVERT; but none of the inhabitants have any knowledge how they came there, nor do they know whether or not any European had ever been in Nepal before the missionaries, who arrived there only the beginning of the present century. They are manifestly two French names of seasons, with an English word between them.
There is also to the northward of the city of Cat'hmandu a hill called Simbi, upon which are some tombs of the Lamas of Tibet, and other people of high rank of the same nation. The monuments are constructed after various forms: two or three of them are pyramidal, very high, and well ornamented; so that they have a very good appearance, and may be seen at a considerable distance. Round these monuments are remarkable stones covered with characters, which probably are the inscriptions of some of the inhabitants of Tibet whose bones were interred there. The natives of Nepal not only look upon the hill as sacred, but imagine it is protected by their idols; and from this erroneous supposition never think of stationing troops there for the defence
defence of it, although it be a post of great importance, and only at a short mile's distance from the city. During the hostilities, however, which prevailed when our author was in the country, this sacred hill was fortified by one of the armies, who, in digging their ditches among the tombs, found considerable pieces of gold, with a quantity of which metal the corpses of the grandees of Tibet are always interred.
The kingdom of Nepal our author believes to be very ancient, because it has always preserved its peculiar language and independence. It was completely ruined, however, about thirty or forty years ago by the dissensions of its nobles, who, on the death of their sovereign, and, as it would seem, the extinction of the royal line, could not agree in their choice of a proper successor. The consequence was, that different sovereigns were set up by the nobles of different districts; and these waged war with each other, with a degree of treachery and savage atrocity that has hardly a parallel in the annals of the world. Even the Brahmins, whom we are accustomed to consider as a mild and innocent people, were, in the civil wars of Nepal, guilty of the meanest and basest villanies: they brought about treaties between the rival sovereigns, and then encouraged him whom they favoured, to massacre the adherents of the other in cold blood.