The Kingdom of Winged Men
A story of Mountains, Mughals, and Musk Deer Diplomacy
Almora is one of the most underrated towns in the Himalayas. Its bazaar is arguably the prettiest in India, filled with stunning wood-carved houses, and its stone temples are a spectacle to behold.
Indeed it was a favourite spot for the Hippie movement back in the day. Just above Almora, you can still visit ‘Cranks Ridge,’ a destination favourite of Cat Stevens, Bob Dylan and George Harrison.
Here, the psychedelic superstar Timothy Leary went around giving acid to locals, and the beat poet Alan Ginsberg once accidentally spiked its water supply with LSD.
Bizzarely, the actress Uma Thurman even spent part of her childhood here. Her father, it turns out, was a scholar of the Himalayas and translated the Tibetan Book of the Dead!
I was surprised, however, by the number of beautiful stone temples in the area, many of them from the 16th and 17th centuries and adorned with Mughal motifs. Almora was a region I’d never previously associated with the Mughal Empire. But the more I researched, the more I became fascinated I became.
For almost two hundred years, from the mid-16th to mid-18th century, Almora was the capital of a Mughal vassal state known as the Chand kingdom. It was never directly ruled by the Emperors of Delhi, but as a vassal it was hugely impacted by the Empire, and Mughal art and architecture proved a major influence in the region.
Its a story that is little know, but nonetheless a fascinating one. This essay is my attempt to piece the story together.
The Rise of the Chand Dynasty
By the time the Mughals showed up on the scene, the region of Kumaon was one of the great hotspots of pilgrimage in South Asia. Regarded as a deva bhumi, a land of Gods, its grand stone temples lured adventurous mendicants from far and wide.
The Mughals would not even be the first Muslims that Kumaon’s kings interacted with. According to court chronicles, when the Chand governors began to assert their independence from Nepal’s Khasa Empire in the 14th century, they approached Muhammad Tuqluq of Delhi for recognition of their independence.
Indeed it was this sultans imperial decree that first legitimised Raja Jnan Chand claim of all of Kumaon. Perhaps as recognition of this, the city of Almora was originally named Alamnagar - Alam being the Arabic world for universe. This seems to have somehow got mixed up with the word ‘Bhilmora’ - a local type of sorrel that was grown nearby, eventually giving us the present name Almora.
So how did Almora become a Mughal vassal?
The story goes that Rudra Chand was just a young boy when he came to the throne of Almora in 1568, and the Mughal Governor of Lucknow saw his accesion as an opportunity to invade his mountain kingdom.
Not wanting to cause unneccesary loss of life, Rudra Chand suggested that the two sides resolve the war through a duel. The young Rudra Chand won, and the Mughal Emperor Akbar was so impressed by his bravery that he invited the young king of Almora to meet him in Lahore.
Of course our source for this wonderful story is Rudra Chand’s court poets, and it was probably invented to make Rudra Chand's subsequent supplication to Akbar palatable to his subjects.
What we do know is that Rudra Chand now paid homage to the Mughal Emperor, and the historian Badauni tells us that he brought "a number of unique presents: a Tibetan yak, one musk deer and horses.” Unfortunately, Badauni notes, “The musk deer died of the heat" soon after.
Badauni seems to have been mystified by the Arrival of this king from the mountains, and was clearly convinced that Kumaon was a land of strange beats and monsters. In Rudra Chand's kingdom, he confidently writes, many of the men have wings.
Rudra Chand was subsequently made a Mughal Mansabdar and according to Kumaoni state chronicles, Akbar's minister Birbal was even briefly appointed as his priest. Rudra Chand subsequently led the Mughal army in a battle at Nagaur and he returned to Almora incredibly rich.
On his return, he then built a new Palace called Malla Mahal as well as two temples to Bhairav and Devi that survive to this day.
Making a State
Absorption into the Mughal Empire had very real consequences for Almora, for the king now had to be able to raise 3000 cavalry and 5000 infantry for the Mughal Army on request This required levels of state control never seen before in Kumaon.
Rudra’s succesor Laxmi Chand is thus the first king of Almora who chronicles describe as building a beaurocracy. We hear how he divided the state into ‘parganas’ and began to differentiate between army commanders (faujdars) and government employees (negis).
Like his father, he paid homage to the Mughal Emperor (this time Jahangir) and like his father, he brought a musk deer as a gift. Moreover this one, we are told, succesfully survived the heat.
Within just a few generations, however, the Chand kingdom began to fall apart again. King Vijay Chand is described by chronicles as a "lover of sexual pleasure”, a man perpetually "engrossed in prostitution, wine and merry-making". Under his rule, the newly founded state began to collapse, and the king was subsequently overthrown in a coup.
That could have been the end of the Chand kingdom. Indeed by 1638, when Baz Bahadur Chand came to power, the dynasty had lost huge chunks of their territory.
So what did he do? He went back to the Mughal court and asked that his dynasty be again recognised as the sole rulers of Kumaon.
Once again, a musk deer was brought as a gift, but this time it was accompanied by swords, scimitars and "a string of several hassles suspended from an elephants neck.”
But the new Emperor Shah Jahan apparently refused to get involved unless Baz Bahadur helped him in return. The Mughals were trying to invade neighbouring Garhwal at the time, and so Shah Jahan promised that if Baz Bahadur joined helped him annexe the region, then he would help bolster Baz’s claim over Kumaon.
Baz Bahadur thus helped the Shah Jahan annexe the last bit of Uttarakhand outside of the Empire, stealing many of the Garhwali temple idols during the campaign and sending them back to Almora.
Shah Jahan subsequently granted Baz the title 'Maharajadhiraj,' bestowed him with a bejewelled robe and an imperial decree affirming his rule over Kumaon. Chand rule over Kumaon was secure once again.
Conquering the Four Directions
Baz Bahadur’s reign would see many typically Mughal practises suddenly appear in Kumaon. Courtly dress began to imitate that of Delhi, naubat drums were erected around the palace, and the temple built for his new Garhwali idols would be adorned by Shah Jahani floral motifs.
Yet if Baz had one foot in the Persianate courtly culture of the Mughals, his other foot remained firmly in the Sanskritic world of his ancestors.
Indeed having helped Shah Jahan conquer Garhwal in the east, Baz Bahadur seems to have decided to do a ‘digvijaya,’ or conquest of the four directions, long seen as one of the greatest achievements of any Hindu king.
In the south he conquered parts of the Terai, and in the west, he pushed his kingdom into the fringes of modern Nepal. Then he turned north and set off towards Tibet, seizing a border fortress called Takalkhal Fort.
Today, random reddit threads often credit Baz Bahadur for "conquering Tibet." But whilst he certainly did seize one border fort from the Tibetans, this is rather different from conquering 2.5 million square kilometers of land.
In many of the lands he conquered, he would build new temples - an act that may have been political fiven Aurangzeb’s suppsed ban on temple building at the time.
Baz Bahadur’s conquests didnt win him many friends however, and by the end of his life he was mostly seen as a tyrant.
"Like Aurangzeb" writes Badri Datt Pande, Baz Bahadur "developed insanity. He was always suspicious of his courtiers that anyone might kill him." Indeed when Baz Bahadur finally died in 1678, there was apparently much rejoicing across his kingdom.
The Last Days of the Chand Dynasty
Its was Baz Bahadur's son, King Udyot Chand, who would build perhaps the city's most intriguing temples.
Known as the Udyotchandeshwar and the Parvateswar temples, they are the largest in Almora today, and represent the Mughal-Kumaoni fusion of styles at its most confident.
Crenulated arches house small icons of deities, and on a band around the centre of the temple, we see a range of sexual motifs that seem to preempt many later developments in Mughal art - notably the sex scene of Muhammad Shah Rangeela.
The appearance of such scenes was not uncommon on temples at the time - both depicting the Kama Sutra or other regional erotoc traditions. But the fact that the characters appear to be wearing Mughal outfits is definitely noteworthy.
Soon after, the Mughal empire began collapsing. King Jagat Chand (1708-1720) would be one of the last kings of Almora to pay tribute to a Mughal Empire. Indeed in the 1720s, King Devi Chand of Almora even wrote to Jai Singh of Jaipur suggesting that they jointly attempt to dethrone the emperor of Delhi.
Almora, like so many other kingdoms across india, was reasserting its independence.
But its independence would be short-lived, however. In 1744 the Rohilla Afghans invaded and occupied the kingdom for 7 months. Soon after, the Gurkhas annexed Kumaon to Nepal. Then, in the 19th century, the East India Company went to war with Nepal, and annexed Kumaon to the growing British Empire.
The Chand Kingdom of Kumaon had ceased to exist.
I visited Almora many many years ago, and remember a charming hill town. Thanks for this!
Thanks for this great history article and photos. I'm definitely adding now Almora to my travel list! (and Kumaon overall)