A hill kingdom that nearly took Kathmandu
Palpa was Magar country first. The name Tansen is said to come from the Magar language, meaning northern settlement, and the area was part of the Barha Magarat, the twelve Magar principalities of the western hills. In the 16th century the Sen dynasty made Palpa a power. Under King Mukunda Sen, Palpa's army marched east and came close to conquering the Kathmandu Valley.
Palpa stayed independent through most of the 18th century while the Shah kings of Gorkha unified Nepal, and it was annexed only in 1806. Its new governors built in Tansen: the Amar Narayan temple, the Bhagwati temple, raised after the fighting with the British East India Company in 1814–16, and later a Rana palace, the Tansen Durbar, now a museum after being rebuilt following an attack in the civil war.
Through the 19th and 20th centuries Tansen was a Newar trading town. Its weavers made dhaka, the patterned cloth of Nepal's topi caps, and its metalworkers made the spouted brass karuwa jugs still given at weddings. In 1954 the United Mission Hospital opened just east of town, and it still serves the hill districts.
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