Malla dynasty

The Malla dynasty ruled the Nepal Mandala, the Kathmandu Valley and its surrounding hills, from 1201 until the valley's conquest by Prithvi Narayan Shah in 1769. Its name comes from the Sanskrit word for wrestler, a title adopted by Arideva Malla; later kings claimed descent from the Licchavi and Raghuvamsha lines, and from the fourteenth century some traced their ancestry to the Karnat dynasty of Mithila. The valley was the meeting point of trade routes between India and Tibet, and Malla patronage made Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur three of the most refined urban centres of the Himalayan region. Newar was the language of court and literature, while Maithili, Bhojpuri and Bengali also flourished; architects and artists produced the tiered pagoda temples, palace courtyards and bronze images that still define the Durbar Squares. The early Malla period was often unstable: an earthquake in 1255 killed a third of Kathmandu's people, and a Bengali invasion in 1345 and 1346 destroyed temples and palaces. Jayasthiti Malla reunified the valley in the late fourteenth century and codified its laws, but after 1482 his descendants divided it into the three rival kingdoms of Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur. Their competition in war, ritual and building produced the late Malla cultural flowering, until the Gorkha king Prithvi Narayan Shah took the valley and ended the dynasty.