Mapping Piety, Politics and Power in Early Medieval Nepal

This project will provide an innovative contribution to the historical knowledge of early medieval Nepal, offering a new and cross-disciplinary approach to the analysis of the Kathmandu Valleys valuable corpus of Sanskrit stone inscriptions dating from the fifth to the eighth centuries CE, centuries known as the Licchavi period. Despite their historical significance for the study of early medieval Nepal, prior to the applicants research activities, these inscriptions have not been systematically documented and only studied with pre-digital methods. Historical reconstructions of this period have largely adopted a purely textual approach, focused on individual inscriptions, whereby the inscription texts have been studied disassociated from their immediate locational context. This has led to a limited understanding of the development of ancient settlement patterns and has supported a royal historical narrative largely centered on the sovereignty of the Licchavi family, whereby the dynamic histories of various complex activities in the political and socio-religious sphere have been obfuscated, histories that challenge the commonly held view of a centralized system. Going beyond the purely textual approach, this project aims to retrieve such untold histories and map administrative, political and donative patterns involving the power of the ministers and feudatories, dynamics between the central areas associated with the royal line and outer villages along trade routes, and the role of Hindu and Buddhist religious networks. In addition, the growth and development of old settlement patterns will be reconstructed by linking the inscription evidence to previously unavailable new scientifically dated sequences and systematic data from archaeological investigations. These analyses will be achieved through new editions and location contextualization of the inscriptions, based on the first systematic documentation of this important corpus. Relevant text information on administrative, political and religious processes will be extracted from the inscriptions texts and mapped on the ground. In addition, by editing and translating new epigraphic evidence that was discovered during earlier documentation activities undertaken by the applicant, the project will likely also be able to reconstruct the political circumstances leading to the Licchavis loss of power, which involved allegiance with the Rarakuas in India. This project will break new ground in understanding the Kathmandu Valleys ancient religio-political landscape and the role of Hindu and Buddhist groups in legitimizing power. The project will also for the first time make available the majority of the corpus of early Nepal inscriptions, including all documentation of their material aspects, on an online database, accompanied by English translations, as well as philological and historical commentaries and a glossary.