Dang Deokhuri District

Dang District ( ne, दाङ जिल्ला, ) is the district of Lumbini Province located in the Inner Terai of midwestern Nepal. Deukhuri valley of the district is the capital of the province and is the second largest valley of Asia surrounded by Sivalik Hills and Mahabharata Range. The district headquarter Ghorahi is the seventh largest city and the largest sub-metropolitan city of Nepal. Tulsipur sub-metropolitan city, the second largest city of Dang, is a major transportation hub with an extensive road and air networks. The district covers an area of 2,955 km² and has a population of 548,141 (2011 census).

Dang district has been archeologically studied extensively since the 20th century due to the discoveries of ancient fossils of apes and early humans.

The district is considered the center of Sanskrit language in Nepal and is home to Nepal's second oldest university, Nepal Sanskrit University which is the only Sanskrit university of the country as well as Rapti Academy of Health Sciences (RAHS), the state-owned medical college of Lumbini Province with the Prime Minister of Nepal as the Chancellor. There are numerous temples and gumbas in Dang Deukhuri district with puranic legendary connections to '' Mahābhārata,'' Shaivism, Shaktism & Gorakhnath making it one of the richest cultural sites of the country.

History and prehistory

Prehistory

Archeologists consider the Churiya range very ancient with the existence of Sivapithecus (syn:''Ramapithecus),'' a link between man ''a''nd ape. The pre-historic study of Dang valley has been carried out by Tribhuvan University since 1966, including the geological study of the Valley by Robert M. West from the American Museum of Natural History and the Department of Mines of then His Majesty's Government of Nepal from 1976, as well as the paleolithic study of Dang by University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (''Fredrich-Alexander-Universität'') of Germany in 1984, among others. According to these concurrent researches, Dang valley was a lake approximately 2.5 to 1 million years ago.

During 1984–86, German researcher Gudrun Corvinus studied the miocene-pliocene stratigraphy and geology of Dang valley researching on the pleistocene holocene period of ancient human settlements. She studied the exposed section of the road being constructed between Koilabas and the Dang Valley running through Deukhuri. Hand axes and other artifacts dated to early Paleolithic (1.8 million to 100,000 years ago) have been found in alluvial deposits along the Babai River in Dang Valley. Archeologists classify these as Acheulean, i.e. 'second-generation' toolmaking that succeeds the very oldest Olduwan.

There are more numerous less ancient archeological sites dating to the Upper Paleolithic/ Late Pleistocene (about 50,000 to 10,000 years ago). These are also along the Babai, as well as in Deukhuri Valley (Rapti River) adjacent and south of Dang Valley. Archeologists classify these as Acheulean, i.e. 'second-generation' toolmaking that succeeds the very oldest Olduwan.

Tharu Civilisation

Since ancient times, Dang valley is considered to have been inhabited by the indigenous ''Tharu people,'' albeit the exact timing of origin is still a matter of archeological research Researchers consider that the valley was a growing center of Tharu civilisation. In the current times, Tharu people comprise one of the prominent indigenous ethnic communities of Nepal, and the Tharus inhabiting Dang valley are called Dangaura Tharus who have been able to retain their highly rich unique traditional culture.

Medieval and Modern History

Evidence show that when the Khasa Kingdom was in existence in western Nepal, Dang was virtually under their political domination. One of the document of Punya Malla mentions that the valley was awarded to Jayakar Pundit as a virta in 1336 AD. From 1350 AD onwards, Meghraj Singh Chauhan of Chauhan dynasty is recorded to have been the king of the region as per the records in the Yogi Ratna Nath's Chaughera monastery of Dang valley, the third-in-line of Yogi Gorakhnath.The temple held a strong spiritual importance over the rulers of the valley, even after the change of power to new dynasties as such the internal activities of the temple were almost entirely unaffected for hundreds of years. Nevills Gazetteer of Bahreich (1922:124) mentions that in 1485 AD, Dangdun was in the possession of Udat Singh. Evidence shows that the last independent king Nawal Singh Chauhan ruled from Chaughera of Dang until 1760 AD as the House of Tulsipur which ruled one of the largest Taluqs of Oudh, India, which then included the Dang and Deukhuri Valleys.The town shares its name with another Tulsipur in Dang Deukhuri District, Nepal (c.65k North); the two towns are linked historically by having the same ruler.

In 1760 AD, Gorkhali King Prithvi Narayan Shah annexed the valley into the expanding Gorkha Kingdom. Three years later, Dang (except Tulsipur lands south of the Siwalik Hills) was given as a dowry to the King of Salyan in 1763 AD for the marriage of King Prithvi Narayan Shah's daughter. Around 1808 AD, Dang valley was finally annexed into the Kingdom of Nepal when Salyan state merged with the Unified Nepal of Shah kings.

Since Dang was somewhat higher, hotter, better-drained and therefore less malarial than most Inner Terai valleys in Nepal, it was settled to some extent by Shah and ''Rana'' courtiers and other ''Nepalese''. Deukhuri was more of a Tharu enclave until DDT was introduced to control the disease-bearing ''Anopheles'' mosquito in the 1950s. Before the construction of Rapti Bridge, Koilabas of Dang Valley was a major trading post with India which was slowly abandoned later. Koilabas has remnants of Persian Mughal Empire- style architecture visible in its ruins even now. Long time ago, Dang used to be the capital of Rapti Zone.

Administration

The district consists of two sub-metropolitan cities and eight municipalities, out of which one is an urban municipality and seven are rural municipalities.The administrative regions are as follows:
* Ghorahi Sub-Metropolitan City
* Tulsipur Sub-Metropolitan City
* Lamahi Municipality
*Gadhawa Rural Municipality
* Rajpur Rural Municipality
* Shantinagar Rural Municipality
* Rapti Rural Municipality
* Banglachuli Rural Municipality
* Dangisharan Rural Municipality
* Babai Rural Municipality

Geography and Climate

This district consists of the larger easterly and upstream portions of the parallel Inner Terai valleys of Dang and Deukhuri, plus enclosing ranges of hills and mountains. Downstream, both valleys cross into Banke District.

To the south, the district borders Uttar Pradesh, a state in India, Nepal's neighboring country—specifically the Balarampur and Shravasti districts of Awadh. Because the international border follows the southern edge of the outermost Siwalik foothills called the Dudhwa Range, there is no Outer Terai extending onto the main Ganges Plain inside this district. The permeable geology of the Siwaliks does not support moisture retention or soil development, so they are covered with unproductive scrub forest.

The Dudhwas rise steeply to a crest at about 700 meters, then slope more gradually into the Deukhuri Valley, down to 250 meters elevation at the Rapti River. The Dudhwas extend more than 100 km, causing the Rapti to detour west around them before turning southeast down the main trend of the plains into India. Deukhuri's climate is nearly tropical and it is well watered by the river, as well as possessing abundant groundwater. North of Deukhuri Valley, the Dang Range rises as high as 1,000 meters with passes at about 700 meters. The Dang Valley lies north of these hills, drained by the Babai River tributary to the Ghaghara (Karnali). Valley elevations range from 600 meters along the Babai with alluvial slopes gradually rising northward to 700 meters along the base of the Mahabharat Range. The district then extends upslope to the crest of the Mahabharats at 1,500 to 1,700 meters elevation. The bordering districts to the north are Pyuthan, Rolpa, and Salyan. The Rapti River of Western Nepal traverses through most of the lower Dang valley. It flows beneath the Churia range first on the northern side of the hills and then leaves the hills on the southern side. Nepal's second-longest bridge over Rapti river in Dang district connects Sisahaniya of Rapti Rural Municipality with Mahadeva of Gadawa Rural Municipality in the district.

Demography

The dry and agriculturally unproductive Dudhwa range creates a buffer zone between the divergent cultures of the plains of Uttar Pradesh and the Inner Terai. Deukhuri was severely malarial before the late 1950s when DDT came into use to suppress mosquitos so that Tharu people who had evolved resistance managed to live in isolation from other cultures of the plains to the south and the hills to the north. Although road development further reduced Deukhuri's isolation by the 1980s, the valley retains some of its Garden of Eden charm with its lazy river, thick jungle alternating with rice paddies, surrounding hills in the middle distance and unique peoples.

Dang Valley is higher, less tropical, drier and less malarial than Deukhuri. Despite poorer soil and more seasonal streamflow, its healthier climate made it more attractive to settlers from outside even before the introduction of DDT. Since the early 1990s activist groups have been attempting to eradicate the practice of child indentured servitude among the Tharu, many of whom sold young daughters to wealthy families in urban areas. This region has majority of people of the Tharu ethnicity. The steep, virtually uninhabited southern slopes of the Mahabharat Range are another cultural buffer zone between traditional Tharu lands and the culturally distinct ''Middle Hills'' where Nepali is the dominant language, the homeland of dangi Chhetris. The Kumal (potter) ethnic group is also semi-indigenous. At the time of the 2011 Nepal census, Dang District had a population of 552,583. Of these, 66.7% spoke Nepali, 28.1% Tharu, 1.9% Awadhi, 1.0% Magar, 0.9% Kham, 0.5% Hindi and 0.4% Urdu

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