Nepal,[a] officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal,[b] is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mainly situated in the Himalayas, but also includes parts of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. It borders the Tibet Autonomous Region of China to the north, and India to the south, east, and west, while it is narrowly separated from Bangladesh by the Siliguri Corridor, and from Bhutan by the Indian state of Sikkim. Nepal has a diverse geography, including fertile plains, subalpine forested hills, and eight of the world’s ten highest mountains, including Mount Everest, the highest point above mean sea level on Earth.[16] Kathmandu is the nation’s capital and its largest city. Nepal is a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religious, and multi-cultural state, with Nepali as the official language.
The name “Nepal” is first recorded in texts from the Vedic period of the Indian subcontinent, the era in ancient Nepal when Hinduism was founded, the predominant religion of the country. In the middle of the first millennium BC, Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, was born in Lumbini in southern Nepal. Parts of northern Nepal were intertwined with the culture of Tibet. The centrally located Kathmandu Valley is intertwined with the culture of Indo-Aryans, and was the seat of the prosperous Newar confederacy known as Nepal Mandala. The Himalayan branch of the ancient Silk Road was dominated by the valley’s traders. The cosmopolitan region developed distinct traditional art and architecture. By the 18th century, the Gorkha Kingdom achieved the unification of Nepal. The Shah dynasty established the Kingdom of Nepal and later formed an alliance with the British Empire, under its Rana dynasty of premiers. The country was never colonised but served as a buffer state between Imperial China and British India. Parliamentary democracy was introduced in 1951 but was twice suspended by Nepalese monarchs, in 1960 and 2005. The Nepalese Civil War in the 1990s and early 2000s resulted in the establishment of a secular republic in 2008, ending the world’s last Hindu monarchy. The Constitution of Nepal, adopted in 2015, affirms the country as a federal parliamentary republic divided into seven provinces. In September 2025, protests against a social media ban and economic inequality caused riots, resulting in casualties and resignation of the prime minister.
Nepal’s foreign policy focuses on neutrality, sovereignty, and multilateral cooperation. Nepal was admitted to the United Nations in 1955, and friendship treaties were signed with India in 1950 and China in 1960. Nepal hosts the permanent secretariat of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), of which it is a founding member. Nepal is also a member of the Non-Aligned Movement and the Bay of Bengal Initiative. Nepal’s foreign relations also emphasise development assistance, trade partnerships, and promoting peace and stability in South Asia.
Etymology
Before the unification of Nepal, the Kathmandu Valley was known as Nepal.[c] The precise origin of the term Nepāl is uncertain. Nepal appears in ancient Indian literary texts dated as far back as the fourth century AD.[18] An absolute chronology can not be established, as even the oldest texts may contain anonymous contributions dating as late as the early modern period. Academic attempts to provide a plausible theory are hindered by the lack of a complete picture of history and insufficient understanding of linguistics or relevant Indo-European and Tibeto-Burman languages.[19]
According to Hindu mythology, Nepal derives its name from an ancient Hindu sage called Ne, referred to variously as Ne Muni or Nemi. According to Pashupati Purāna, as a place protected by Ne, the country in the heart of the Himalayas came to be known as Nepāl.[20][21][d] According to Nepāl Mahātmya,[e] Nemi was charged with protection of the country by Pashupati.[22] According to Buddhist mythology, Manjushri Bodhisattva drained a primordial lake of serpents to create the Nepal valley and proclaimed that Adi-Buddha Ne would take care of the community that would settle it. As the cherished of Ne, the valley would be called Nepāl.[23] According to Gopalarājvamshāvali, the genealogy of ancient Gopala dynasty compiled c. 1380s, Nepal is named after Nepa the cowherd, the founder of the Nepali scion of the Abhiras. In this account, the cow that issued milk to the spot, at which Nepa discovered the Jyotirlinga of Pashupatināth upon investigation, was also named Ne.[19]
The Ne Muni etymology was rightly dismissed by the early European visitors.[24] Norwegian indologist Christian Lassen proposed that Nepāla was a compound of Nipa (foot of a mountain) and -ala (short suffix for alaya meaning abode), and so Nepāla meant “abode at the foot of the mountain”.[25] Indologist Sylvain Levi found Lassen’s theory untenable but had no theories of his own, only suggesting that either Newara is a vulgarism of sanskritic Nepala, or Nepala is Sanskritisation of the local ethnic;[26] his view has found some support though it does not answer the question of etymology.[27][28][29][19] It has also been proposed that Nepa is a Tibeto-Burman stem consisting of Ne (cattle) and Pa (keeper), reflecting the fact that early inhabitants of the valley were Gopalas (cowherds) and Mahispalas (buffalo-herds).[19] Suniti Kumar Chatterji believed Nepal originated from Tibeto-Burman roots – Ne, of uncertain meaning (as multiple possibilities exist), and pala or bal, whose meaning is lost entirely.
History
In the 11th century, a powerful empire of Khas people emerged in western Nepal whose territory at its highest peak included much of western Nepal as well as parts of western Tibet and Uttarakhand of India. By the 14th century, the empire had splintered into loosely associated Baise rajyas, literally 22 states) as they were counted. The rich culture and language of the Khas people spread throughout Nepal and as far as Indo-China in the intervening centuries; their language, later renamed the Nepali language, became the lingua franca of Nepal as well as much of North-east India.[47]
In south-eastern Nepal on the border with Bihar, Simraungadh was the capital of the Karnats of Mithila around 1100 AD, and the unified Tirhut stood as a powerful kingdom for more than 200 years,[53] even ruling over Kathmandu for a time.[54] After another 300 years of Muslim rule, Tirhut came under the control of the Senas of Makwanpur.[53] In the eastern hills, a confederation of Kirat principalities ruled the area between Kathmandu and Bengal.
In the Kathmandu valley, the Mallas, who make several appearances in Nepalese history since ancient times, had established themselves in Kathmandu and Patan by the middle of the 14th century. The Mallas ruled the valley first under the suzerainty of Tirhut but established independent reign by late 14th century as Tirhut went into decline. In the late 14th century, Jayasthiti Malla introduced widespread socio-economic reforms, principal of which was the caste system. By dividing the indigenous non-Aryan Buddhist population into castes modelled after the four Varna system of Hinduism, he provided an influential model for the Sanskritisation and Hinduisation of the indigenous non-Hindu tribal populations in all principalities throughout Nepal. By the middle of the 15th century, Kathmandu had become a powerful empire which, according to Kirkpatrick, extended from Digarchi or Shigatse in Tibet to Tirhut and Gaya in India.[55]
In the late 15th century, Malla princes divided their kingdom in four – Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur in the valley and Banepa to the east. The competition for prestige among these brotherly kingdoms saw the flourishing of art and architecture in central Nepal, and the building of famous Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur Durbar Squares; their division and mistrust led to their fall in the late 18th century, and ultimately, the unification of Nepal into a modern state.[47][56]
Apart from one destructive sacking of Kathmandu valley in the mid 14th century,[57] Nepal remains largely untouched by the Muslim invasion of India that began in the 11th century. The Mughal period saw an influx of high-caste Hindus from India into Nepal. They soon intermingled with the Khas people and by the 16th century, there were about 50 Rajput-ruled principalities in Nepal, including the 22 (Baisi) states and, to their east in west-central Nepal, 24 Chaubisi states. There emerged a view that Nepal remained the true bastion of unadulterated Hinduism at a time when Indian culture had been influenced by centuries of Mughal, followed by British rule. Gorkha, one of the Baisi states, emerged as an influential and ambitious kingdom with a reputation for justice, after it codified the first Hinduism-based laws in the Nepalese hills.[47]
