Arimalla

Arimalla or Ari Dev (reigned 1201-16) was the first king of the Malla dynasty in Nepal.

Beginning in the early twelfth century, leading notables in Nepal began to appear with names ending in the term ''malla'', (wrestler in Sanskrit), indicating a person of great strength and power. According to the legends Ari Malla was a pioneer figure in wrestling and the title Malla was thus made hereditary by the king to his descendants. According to Gopal Raj Vansawali,Gopal Raj Vansawali he was a licchavi King as Aridev and with the love of wrestling he adopted Malla as a formal surname making him the First Malla King. He led his army against the licchavi Kings and conquered the Kathmandu valley. He was the first king to be so called, and the practice of adopting such a name was followed regularly by rulers in Nepal until the eighteenth century. (The names of the Malla kings were also represented as, for example, Ari Malla.) This long Malla period witnessed the continued importance of the Kathmandu Valley as a political, cultural, and economic center of Nepal. Other areas also began to emerge as significant centers in their own right, increasingly connected to the Kathmandu Valley.

References

Library of Congress

History of Nepal
Malla rulers
13th-century Nepalese people

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