Three cities
Malla rule over the valley was consolidated under Jayasthiti Malla in the fourteenth century, who codified law and, according to the chronicles, systematised the Newar caste order. Yaksha Malla divided the kingdom among his children around 1482, producing three separate states — Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur — in a valley some twenty kilometres across.
The rivalry between them was constant and, for architecture, extraordinarily productive. Each city competed to outbuild the others, and the result is the three durbar squares: palaces with carved timber windows and courtyards, tiered pagoda temples, stone shrines, sunken water spouts, and metalwork of the highest order. The Nyatapola temple at Bhaktapur, five storeys on a stepped plinth flanked by guardian figures, was built in 1702 and has survived every earthquake since.
The Newar craft traditions of this period — repoussé metalwork, wood carving, paubha painting — supplied Tibet as well as the valley, and the artist Araniko led a Nepali workshop to the Yuan court at Beijing in the thirteenth century, where he built the White Stupa.
Conquest
The division that produced this flowering also made the valley indefensible. Prithvi Narayan Shah of Gorkha besieged and blockaded the three cities and took them between 1767 and 1769, unifying them into the kingdom of Nepal.
The durbar squares are UNESCO World Heritage sites; substantial parts of them were destroyed in the earthquake of 2015 and have been rebuilt using the original techniques.
Further reading
- Michell, George. The Hindu Temple: An Introduction to Its Meaning and Forms. University of Chicago Press, 1988
- Asher, Catherine B. India Before Europe. Cambridge University Press, 2006
- Behrendt, Kurt A. The Art of Gandhara in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2007
- Blurton, T. Richard. Hindu Art. Harvard University Press, 1993
- Coedes, George. The Indianized States of Southeast Asia. University of Hawaii Press, 1968
See also
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.