Prithwi Pal succeeded his father, when very young, and was endowed with great personal vigour, nor was he, I believe, at all scrupulous about means; but he seems to have been rash and credulous, which rendered him totally unable to resist the wiles of the people of Gorkha, who were afraid to use open violence, on account of his connexion with the Nawab Vazir. They did not therefore molest his ancient dominions, nor any of the territory that he had acquired on the plains, all of which was tributary to the Nawab; but, immediately after his accession, Rana Bahadur, king of Gorkha and Nepal, compelled the Raja of Palpa to restore the mountains of Gulmi to Siddhi Pratap, the legal heir of that country, whose sister Rana Bahadur had married. When Rana Bahadur of Gorkha determined to place the sovereignty in the hands of Yuddha Vikram Sahi, his illegitimate son, he invited Prithwi Pal to perform the ceremony of Tika, under pretence that he was desirous of obviating the defects of his son’s birth, by having the mark of royalty placed on his forehead by a person of Prithwi Pal’s high rank; for, among the hill chiefs he was considered as the most eminent by birth, and the Raja of Yumila had been expelled from his dominions; nor did the Gorkha family, after the acquisition of Nepal, acknowledge the superiority of its chief. The real object, however, of the invitation, was in all probability to have power over Prithwi Pal; for he remained in a kind of confinement until January 1803, when the noble and high-spirited lady, wife of Rana Bahadur, who then governed Nepal, had the magnanimity to allow him to return to his own territories, although his father had treacherously stript hers of his dominions, and, although there is strong reason to suspect, that Damodar Pangre, discontented with the illegitimacy of Yuddha Vikram, had entered into a conspiracy to dethrone that young prince, and to place Prithwi Pal on the throne of Nepal.