hey many, Let me know where I should do my research.....where do you get your information from?? Id love to read a book on history of Nepal, about the Mallas. I get my information frm a book called Social History of Nepal by TR Vaidya, Tri Ratna Manandhar and Shankar Lal Joshi, if you are familiar with these names, you'd know that they are amongst the pioneers in establsihment of the nepali education system. Where did you learn bout the Jeudai Chaala kaadne punishment?? Im skeptical about it being frm the malla period specially since it is a nepali term, if it was from the Malla period, chances are they would use a newari name at least, but again I might be wrong. About the Mallas having an army; definately they had an army, infact Prithvi Narayan Shah tried invading Ktm a couple of times, everytime the malla army defeated them and chased the shahs away, the only mistake the Mallas did was, they did not bother to follow Shah and kill him; they didnt see him as a threat. Later, Prithvi Narayan Shah disguised himself as a traveller, along with his army and entered kathmandu valley (there is a long story about how he tried to get a place to stay, and every house he went to refused to let him stay for the night, which was in present Thahamaru, for which he later named the place Thahamaru which in newari meant no place). During the festival of indrajatra, when the king and all his army were drunk and enjoying the festivities, Shah went inside the Palace and took over the throne by killing all the drunk soldiers by dhokha!!! ...About Pratap Mallas writing at Hanuman Dhokha, yeah I learnt about it at Dashain, waiting in the long line to go to Taleju, My Dad explained to me how it was supposed to be written in 36 different languages and the legend goes that, if the whole thing is read out loud correctly by anyone, kata ho kata bata pani ho ki milk bagna thalcha re...from a dhunge dhara...!!!! About the Sati System, I know Jung Bahadur was strictly against Sati system too, he put forward the code of 1854 which forbade the commitment of sati if: (a) the widow was below 16 yrs (b) if she had a son less than 16 yrs of age (c) if she had a daughther less than 5 yrs of age (d) if she had two or more husbands (e) If she was pregnant at the time of her husbands death About Nau talle Mandir, intersting I always thought it was built by Pratap Malla for his wife. I know that there are three other smaller peaks on the building that has the nau talle building ( one with a huge leaf as its roof), each were built by three different architechts from Patan, Bhadgaon, and Kirtipur, .... I thought the tallest one was by an architect from Kantipur ( that is kathmandu); Let me know where you got that piece about Nautalle being built by Prithivi Narayan Shah!!! Whoever built them, it is known fact that a lot can be seen from the Malla period, but lot less from the Shah; which doesnt necessarily mean that Mallas were the best and the ultimate rulers; Im pretty sure there might've been a lotta dark patches in the Malla royalties, and the system at that time, afterall, its almost a thousand years ago....and still after a thousand years later, we dont have a decent system. Hence I beleive i say for others here too that the conclusion is, comparatively, Mallas have done more than any other ruler for nepal/ktm.