Magar

The Magar are a Tibeto-Burman people of the Nepalese hills, mentioned in written records from around 1100. Their traditional homeland, Magarat, was split into the twelve-kingdom Bahra Magarat and the eighteen-kingdom Athara Magarat, ruled by local chiefs. In the early sixteenth century the Palpa ruler Mukunda Sen led a raid into the Kathmandu valley.

The independent Magar kings lost their last forts when Dravya Shah took Ligligkot and then Gorkhakot in 1559, founding the Gorkha kingdom on Magar land.

Magar fighters became the backbone of the Gorkhali armies that unified Nepal under Prithvi Narayan Shah in the later eighteenth century, and served in the Gurkha regiments of the Anglo-Nepalese wars. Their beliefs blended Hinduism with Tibetan Buddhism and older shamanic and ancestor cults.