The Europeans, on arrival at the shores of India discovered the country had no history of its own except the Muslims who had maintained elaborate chronicles of their reign. Vincent Smith therefore, aptly called the Herodotus of India, published in 1919 his magnum opus, The Oxford History of India, covering the period from pre-historic age to British Colonial era, in one volume. It was a monumental work considering there was no historical tradition in Hindu India, Vincent Smith had to depend entirely upon his own scholastic prowess to research and validate hitherto unknown history of the sub-continent.

Be that as it may, however, Vincent Smith failed to record the accounts of the Mongolian people of the Sub-Continent which by implication, the story of the Buddha, the Kirati-Mongolian Prince of Nepal. Smith was an Indian Civil Service Officer, and in that capacity he wished not to offend the subjects of India who are Hindus and to the devout Hindus the Buddha is a reincarnation of their supreme god Visnu. Following the precedence set by him no historian has ever attempted to write and the void remains unfilled till this very day. The entire population of the southern slopes of the Himalayas and the North-Eastern region of India are ethnic Mongolians and to identify them as a distinct branch of Mongolians, I have addressed them here as Kirati-Mongolians. Smith knew very well the Mongolian people but decided to say no more than a brief statement that the Buddha was a hillman like a Gurkha.

We hold Vincent Smith guilty to have excluded the Kirati-Mongolians from his Oxford History of India but we forgive him for he lived and worked in another time under different circumstances. It rests upon the shoulders of Kirati-Mongolians themselves now to begin writing their history and this is the beginning.

AUTHOR

No authentic book has yet been written on the people of Nepal who bear Mongolian features and who inhabit the southern slopes of the Himalayas; they are addressed here as Kirati-Mongolians to give them a separate identity from Mongolians elsewhere. Broadly speaking they are identified as the Gurkhas and the books, written mostly by the British Gurkha officers romanticize the subject for the sake of publicity.

There have been distinguished historians like Vincent Smith, Percival Spear and Brian Hodgson, to name just a few, who had time and opportunity to introduce ab initio the Kirati Mongolians as a subject but none did and the intelligentsia remains ignorant for their lapse.

G.L.Rai-Zimmdar has therefore, taken a bold step to break the status quo ante and decided to write and hopes the readers, both the Gurkhas and those who wish them well, will find the image of the Kirati Mongolians under a clearer and brighter light.

You want to read these two books “Anglo-Gurkha Relations” and “The Glory of Kirat History” for one good reason and that is, the author is himself a Kirati-Mongolian Gurkha and being so, most imminently qualified to write these books drawing from the vast reservoir of tradition and folklore that only a true Kirati Mongolian Gurkha can.

Rai-Zimmdar, pictured above, is a retired Colonel of the Gurkhas who now lives with his family in suburban Atlanta, Georgia USA.