Page:History of India Vol 2.djvu/370

 326 THE MEDIAEVAL KINGDOMS OF THE NORTH and other towns are situated, although it has remained generally outside the ordinary range of Indian politics, has maintained sufficient connection with India to re- quire brief mention in a history of that country. In Asoka's time Nepal was an integral part of the empire, and was probably administered directly from the capi- tal as one of the home provinces. In the days of Samudragupta, in the fourth century A. D., when we next hear of the Nepalese kingdom it was an autono- mous tributary frontier state, but, after the fall of the Gupta empire in the following century, it became inde- pendent. Harsha again reduced the kingdom to the position of a tributary state about 638 A. D., and ten years later, when he died, the Nepalese recovered their independ- ence, subject, perhaps, to some slight control from China. They were able to give valuable assistance to the envoy Wang-Hiuen-tse in 648 A. D., when he was expelled from India by Harsha 's usurping successor. At the beginning of the eighth century, before the revival of Chinese activity in the reign of the Emperor Hiuen-tsong, Nepal was for a time a dependency of Tibet. The establishment of the Nepalese era, which dates from October 20, 879 -A. D., in the reign of Raghava-deva, probably marks some important event in local history, the exact nature of which is not known. The kingdom was never subjugated by any of the Mohammedan dynasties, and has retained its autonomy to this day. The conquest of the country by the Gurkhas took place