An encyclopedia of Indian civilization.

Doti kingdom

Also known as The Raika dynasty

Doti was a kingdom of far-western Nepal ruled by the Raika kings, one of the successor states of the Khasa Malla empire, until the Gorkhas absorbed it.


After the Khasa Mallas

When the Khasa Malla kingdom of the Karnali basin broke up in the fourteenth century, its territory divided into the Baise principalities of the hills and, in the far west, the kingdom of Doti under the Raika dynasty. Doti held the country between the Mahakali and the Seti rivers, adjoining Kumaon.

Its language, Doteli, belongs to the western Pahari group that continues across the border into Kumaoni and Garhwali, and the region's cultural continuity with the Indian Himalaya is closer than the modern boundary suggests.

The kingdom fought Kumaon repeatedly over the Mahakali frontier and was conquered by the Gorkhas in the late eighteenth century during the expansion that created modern Nepal.

Further reading

  • Basham, A. L. The Wonder That Was India. Sidgwick & Jackson, 1954
  • Kulke, Hermann. A History of India. Routledge, 2004
  • Asher, Catherine B. India Before Europe. Cambridge University Press, 2006
  • Bakker, Hans T. The World of the Skandapurana. Brill, 2014
  • Bhattacharyya, N. N. History of the Sakta Religion. Munshiram Manoharlal, 1996

See also

This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.