Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-kp629 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-31T11:56:22.426Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Formation of the Concept of Nation-State in Nepal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Richard Burghart
Get access

Abstract

At the turn of the nineteenth century three different indigenous concepts were central to the Nepalese understanding of their polity. These were the possessions (muluk) of the king, the realm (deśa), and the countries (also deśa or des) of a people. Each of these concepts specified a different relationship between ruler, land, and people, and each was legitimated with reference to a different kind of authority: proprietary, ritual, or ancestral. When the East India Company gained politicoeconomic control of the Ganges basin, the Nepalese found that they had to accommodate themselves to a powerful neighbor with alien views on the structure and boundary of the polity. In order to preserve its political autonomy on the subcontinent, the Nepalese government began to reconceive the nature of its polity from a foreign point of view. This article considers reinterpretations by the Nepalese government over a period of one hundred and fifty years of the concepts of possessions, realm, and country in order to form the modern concept of the nation-state.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , November 1984 , pp. 101 - 125
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1984

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

List of References

Acarya, Baburam. 1968. Śrī Baṛrāmahārājādhirāj Pṛthvīnārāyaṇn Śāh. 4 vols. Kathmandu: His Majesty's Press Secretariat.Google Scholar
Adam, Leonhard. 1920. “Criminal Law and Procedure in Nepal a Century Ago: Notes Left by Brian H. Hodgson.” Far Eastern Quarterly 9:146–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Agrawal, Hem Narayan. 1976. The Administrative System of Nepal. New Delhi: Vikas.Google Scholar
Ahmad, D. 1958. “Early Anglo-Nepalese Relations with Particular Reference to the Principality of the Raja of Makwanpur.” Proceedings of the Indian Historical Records Commission (Trivandrum) 34.Google Scholar
Baral, Leelanateshwar. 1964. Life and Writings of Prthvīnārāyan Śāh. Ph.D. dissertation, University of London.Google Scholar
Bengal District Gazetteers: Darbhanga. 1907. Calcutta: The Bengal Secretariat Book Depot.Google Scholar
Bista, Dor Bahadur. 1978. “Nepalis in Tibet.” in Fisher, James, editor, Himalayan Anthropology: The Indo-Tibetan Interface, pp. 187–204. The Hague and Paris: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bouillier, Véronique. 1978. “L'ascéticisme dans le Code Népalais.” Journal Asiatique 266:133–52.Google Scholar
Borgström, Bengt-Erik. 1982. “Power structure and political speech.” Man (n.s.) 17:313–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burghart, Richard. 1978. “The Disappearance and Reappearance of Janakpur.” Kailash 6:257–84.Google Scholar
Burghart, Richard. 1983. “For a Sociology of Indias: An Intracultural Approach to the Study of ‘Hindu society.’” Contributions to Indian Sociology (n.s.) 17:275–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burghart, Richard. 1984. “Regional Circles and the Central Overseer of the Vaishnavite Sect in the Kingdom of Nepal.” In Ballhatchet, K. and Taylor, D., editors, Changing South Asia: Religion and Society, pp. 165–79. Hong Kong: Asian Research Service.Google Scholar
Burghart, Richard. Forthcoming. “Royal Gifts of Land to the Gods in Nepal.” In Cannadine, D. N. and Price, S. R. F., editors, Pomp and Power: Royal Rituals in Pre-industrial Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Caplan, Lionel. 1970. Land and Social Change in East Nepal. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caplan, Lionel. 1980. “Power and Status in South Asian Slavery,” In Watson, J. L., editor, Asian and African Systems of Slavey, pp. 169–94. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Cavenagh, Captain Orfeur. 1851. Rough Notes on the State of Nepal. Calcutta: W. Palmer, Military Orphan Press.Google Scholar
Chauhan, D. S. 1971. The Political Development in Nepal: 1950–1970. New Delhi: Associated Publishing House.Google Scholar
Clark, D. W. 1957. “The Rānī Pokhrī Inscription, Kathmandu.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 20:167–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, D. W. 1969. “Nepali and Pahari.” In Sebeok, T. A., editor, Current Trends in Linguistics: Linguistics in South Asia. Vol. 5. The Hague and Paris: Mouton.Google Scholar
Cohn, Bernard. 1962. “Political Systems in Eighteenth-Century India: The Benaras Region.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 82:312–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Desideri, Father Ippolito. 1932. An Account of the Kingdom of Tibet. Ed. Fileppi, Fillipo de. London: Routledge and Sons.Google Scholar
Papers Respecting the Nepaul War. 1824. London: The East India Company.Google Scholar
Gaborieau, Marc. 1982. “Les rapports de classe dans l'ideologie officielle du Népal.” Caste et Classe en Asie du Sud. Collection Purusārtha 6. Paris: E.H.E.S.S.Google Scholar
Gaige, Frederick H. 1975. Regionalism and National Unity in Nepal. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Giuseppe, Father. 1790. ‘An Account of the Kingdom of Nepaul.” Asiaticke Researches 2:307–22.Google Scholar
Gutschow, N., and Bajracarya, M.. 1977. “Ritual as Mediator of Space in Kathmandu.” Journal of the Nepal Research Centre 1:1–10.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Francis. 1819. An Account of the Kingdom of Nepal. Edinburgh: Archibald Constable.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Francis. 1936. An Account of the Districts of Bihar and Patna in 1811–1812. 2 vols. Patna: Bihar and Orissa Research Society.Google Scholar
Heesterman, J. C. 1976. “Boundaries, Old and New: A Note on the Indian Material.” Paper presented to the International Political Science Association Congress, Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Hitchcock, John T. 1978. “An Additional Perspective on the Nepali Caste System.” In Fisher, James, editor, Himalayan Anthropology: The lndo-Tibetan Interface, pp. 111–20. The Hague and Paris: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Höfer, Andraś. 1979. The Caste Hierarchy and the State in Nepal. Innsbruck: Universitätsverlag.Google Scholar
Hodgson, Brian H. 1836. “On the Administration of Justice in Nepal, with Some Account of the Several Courts, Extent of Their Jurisdiction, and Modes of Procedure.” Asiatic Researches 20:94–134.Google Scholar
Hodgson, Brian H. 1857. Papers Relative to the Colonization, Commerce, Physical Geography, etc., etc., of the Himalaya Mountains and Nepal. (Selections from the Records of the Government of Bengal, no. 27.) Calcutta: Calcutta Gazette Office.Google Scholar
Hodgson, Brian H. 1874. Essays on the Languages, Literature, and Religion of Nepal and Tibet. 2 parts. London: Trubner.Google Scholar
Hodgson, Brian H. n.d. Himalayan Ethnology. (Contains papers originally presented to the Asiatic Society of Bengal with corrections in the margins by the author.) N.p.Google Scholar
Jain, M. S. 1972. The Emergence of a New Aristocracy in Nepal. Agra: Sri Ram Mehra.Google Scholar
Joshi, B. L., and Rose, Leo. 1966. Democratic Innovations in Nepal: A Study in Political Acculturation. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Kirkpatrick, William. 1811. An Account of the Kingdom of Nepaul. London: William Miller.Google Scholar
Kumar, Satish. 1967. Rana Polity in Nepal. London: Asia Publishing House.Google Scholar
Laṃmsāl, Devī Prasād, and Bhaṭṭarāī, Rādhesyām. 1974. “Janakpur An¯calko Purātātvik Sarvekṣsaṇn, Saṃvat 2028.” Prācin Nepāl 26:23–35.Google Scholar
Landon, Percival. 1928. Nepal. 2 vols. London: Constable.Google Scholar
Leuchtag, Erika. 1958. With a King in the Clouds. London: Hutchinson.Google Scholar
Lévi, Sylvain. 1905. Le Népal. Paris: E. Leroux.Google Scholar
The Law of Manu. 1886. Trans. G. Bühler. Sacred Books of the East, vol. 25. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Lingat, Robert. 1967. Les Deux Sources du droit dans le système traditionnel de l'Inde. Paris: Mouton.Google Scholar
MacDonald, A. W. 1970. “La hiérarchie des jat inférieurs dans le Muluki Ain de 1955.” In Pouillon, J. and Maranda, R., editors, Echanges et Communications, pp. 139–52. Paris: Mouton.Google Scholar
Montgomerie, Colonel T. G. 1875. “Extracts from an Explorer's Narrative of His Journey from Pitoragarh in Kumaon via Jumla to Tadum and Back, along the Kali Gandak to British Territory.” Journal of the Royal Geographical Society 45:350–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muluki Ain: Śrī Pañe Surendra Vikram Śāhdevkā śāsankālmā baneko muluki ain. Reprinted 1965. Kathmandu: Law and Justice Ministry.Google Scholar
Neupane, P. 1969. The Constitution and Constitutions of Nepal. Kathmandu: Ratna Pustak Bhandar.Google Scholar
Oldfield, H. A. 1880. Sketches from Nipal. 2 vols. London: W. H. Allen.Google Scholar
Pant, Nayaraj (in collaboration with D. Bhandārī, G. Vajrācārya, and D: Pant). N.d. Śrī Pāñc Prthvinārāyan Śāhko Updeśa. Patan: Jagdamba Prakasan.Google Scholar
Parājuli, Buddhisāgar. 1975. Srī Pān¯c Dravyasāhkrt Rājyābhisekavidhānam. Kathmandu: Rāstriyābhilekhālaya.Google Scholar
Pokharel, Bālakṛṣṇa. 1968. Nepālī Bhāṣā ra Sāhitya. Kathmandu: Ratna Pustak Bhandar.Google Scholar
Regmi, D. 1950. A Century, of Family Autocracy in Nepal. India (?): The Nepali Congress Party.Google Scholar
Regmi, D. 1961. Modern Nepal. Calcutta: Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyaya.Google Scholar
Regmi, D. 1966. Medieval Nepal. 3 vols. Calcutta: Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyaya.Google Scholar
Regmi, M. C. 1963–1968. Land Tenure and Taxation in Nepal. 4 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Regmi, M. C. 1971. A Study in Nepali Economic History, 1768–1846. New Delhi: Manjusri.Google Scholar
Regmi, M. C. 1976. Landownership in Nepal. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Regmi Research Series (RRS). Kathmandu: Regmi Research.Google Scholar
Riccardi, T. 1977. “The Royal Edicts of King Rama Shah of Gorkha.” Kailash 5:29–65.Google Scholar
Rose, Leo E. 1971. Nepal: Strategy for Survival. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sagant, Philippe. 1978. “Les pouvoirs des chefs Limbu au Népal oriental.” L'Homme 18:69–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sagant, Philippe. 1981. “La tête haute: maison, rituel et politique au Népal oriental.” In Toffin, Gérard, editor, L'Homme et la Maison en Himalaya, pp. 149–79. Paris: Éd. du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.Google Scholar
Sharma, P. R. 1978. “Nepal: Hindu-Tribal Interface.” Contributions to Nepalese Studies 6:1–14.Google Scholar
Sherring, M. A. 1868. The Sacred City of the Hindus: An Account of Benaras in Ancient and Modern Times. London: Trubner.Google Scholar
Singh, S. K. 1977. The Fiscal System of Nepal. Kathmandu: Ratna Pustak Bhandar.Google Scholar
Smith, Captain T. 1852. Narratives of a Five Years’ Residence at Nepaul. 2 vols. London: Colburn.Google Scholar
Stiller, Ludwig. 1968. Prithvinarayan Shah in the Light of Dibya Upadesh. Ranchi (Bihar): Catholic Press.Google Scholar
Stiller, Ludwig. 1976. The Silent Cry: The People of Nepal, 1816–1839. Kathmandu: Sahayogi Prakashan.Google Scholar
Toffin, Gérard. 1979. “Les aspects religieux de la royauté Néwar au Népal.” Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions 48:53–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Toffin, Gérard. 1982. “Analyse structurale d'une fête communale Néwar: le deś jātrā de Panauti.” L'Homme 22:57–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tuladhar, Daman R., editor. 1968. Pronouncements of King Mahendra on Pancayatocracy. Kathmandu: Sandesh Griha.Google Scholar
Turnbull, A. 1887. Nepali Grammar and Vocabulary. Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press.Google Scholar
Unbescheid, Günther. 1980. Kānphatā: Untersuchungen zu Kult, Mythologie, und Geschichte Śivaitischer Tantriker in Nepal. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag.Google Scholar
Vajrācārya, D. 1964. “Mallākālmā deśarakṣāko vyavastha ra tyasaprati prajāko kartavya,” Purnimā 1:20–33.Google Scholar
Vajrācārya, D. 1975. “Śrī Pān¯c Prthvī Nārāyaṇ Śāhko Nuvākoṭt-māṛī darbār.” Contributions to Nepalese Studies 2:145–54.Google Scholar
Vajracarya, G. 1975. An Introduction to Hanuman Dhoka. Trans. Stiller, Ludwig. Kathmandu: Institute of Nepal and Asian Studies.Google Scholar
Vergati-Stahl, Anne. 1979. “Taleju, Sovereign Deity of Bhaktapur.” In Asie du Sud, Traditions et changements, pp. 163–67. Paris: Éd. du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.Google Scholar
Wright, Daniel. 1877. History of Nepal. Cambridge: University Press.Google Scholar