The Prophecy of Gorakhnath
How a thousand year old Yogi predicted the downfall of a royal lineage
On June 1st of 2001, citizens of the small, mountainous, South Asian nation of Nepal received news which brought the entire country to a standstill.
Almost every member of Nepal’s royal family had been slaughtered, in what appeared to be an attack by a lone gunman. Yet as the day wore on, the situation took a dramatic turn for the worse.
It emerged that the crazed shooter was none other than the royal family’s very own...
...Crown Prince Dipendra.
Born on June 27th of 1971, Dipendra was the eldest child of Birendra, the Crown Prince of Nepal, and the Princess Aishwarya.
After graduating high school in the capital, Kathmandu, Dipendra went on to study at the UK’s Eton College, before beginning a career in the Nepalese military.
Known as ‘Dippy’ among his friends, Dipendra was friendly, outgoing, and surprisingly humble for a young man who was often addressed as ‘Crown Prince’, or even, ‘His Royal Highness’.
He was outgoing, athletic, and openly called for a generous expansion of the Nepalese welfare system. He was also a patron of the Nepalese Boy Scouts, and occasionally spent time writing essays on the subjects of nationhood and national identity.
To many, Dipendra represented the future of Nepal’s royalty. Little did they know, he would be the instigator of its very downfall.
On the evening of June 1st, once the grounds of the Royal Palace had been secured, Nepal’s chief justice held a press conference, and read the following statement to a gathering of the nation’s media.
“On the first of June, 2001, Crown Prince Dipendra opened fire at a house on the grounds of the [Royal] Palace, the residence of the Nepalese monarchy, where a party was being held. He shot and killed his father, King Birendra, his mother, Queen Aishwarya, and seven other members of the royal family including his younger brother and sister before shooting himself in the head”.
The citizens of Nepal were shellshocked. How could their beloved Crown Prince have done something so utterly horrifying?
The chief justice went on to announce that, since Dipendra had survived the self-inflicted gunshot wound, he had technically inherited the throne upon the death of his father, King Birendra.
He lay in a hospital bed, in a comatose state, both a mass murderer, and a monarch.
In the days that followed, many questions were asked of both the Nepalese government, and its subordinate security services.
But without a doubt, the overarching question remained ‘why’.
Had Dipendra suffered some kind of sudden psychotic break, shot his family in a daze, then taken his own life when he realized what he’d done?
Or had he deliberately killed them? In which case, what prompted his decision to do so?
To this day, there have been no definitive conclusions on why Dipendra carried out the murder of his family, but a number of sometimes contradictory theories remain prevalent.
The first theory centers around a rejected bid for marriage, one which caused Dipendra to descend into a murderous rage.
While visiting the United Kingdom, Dipendra had met an Indian girl by the name of Devyani Rana. Then, upon returning to Nepal, Dipendra announced that he was in love with Devyani, and wished to marry her.
Supposedly, King Birendra rejected his son’s proposal, claiming that the girl’s family were of a lower class, and that her father’s political leanings also left a lot to be desired.
What’s more, the King and Queen had already picked out a prospective bride for their Crown Price, and having ensured she was of aristocratic Nepalese stock, they would not budge on their decision.
This is supposedly when Dipendra flew into a murderous rage, gunning down his family in the heat of passion, before finally turning his weapon on himself.
However, a few of this story’s details simply do not add up.
Firstly, Devyani Rana was most certainly not “lower class”, and King Birendra would’ve almost definitely have known this.
Her family were descended from former Indian royalty, and were actually much wealthier than the Nepalese royal family. In fact, upon hearing that her daughter was in love with the Crown Prince of Nepal, Devyani’s mother warned her that the move might result in a sharp decline of her standard of living.
It also seems highly out of character for someone like Dipendra, who was intensely passionate about Nepalese nationhood, to insist on marrying an Indian woman after having known her a relatively short amount of time.
It also seems even more out of character for Dipendra to fly into a murderous rage over just about anything, at least, not of his own volition anyway.
This also pokes holes in the theory that Dipendra murdered his family after his father, the King, suggested they completely dissolve the monarchy following the end of his reign. And even so, if Dipendra did intend the murders to be a violent coup d’etat - why take his own life once he believed everyone to be dead?
Others have looked to other areas of the investigation, where they claim chilling inconsistencies lie.
Many have questioned why there wasn’t more security at the party where the attack took place; while a number of people have pointed out that Dipendra’s supposedly self inflicted gunshot wound was located at his left temple. Something which struck them very unusual for a right-handed person.
The Nepalese government then shocked the world by refusing any and all help from friendly nations, asserting the burden of the tragedy was theirs to carry alone.
This might strike many as decidedly dignified, but some, Scotland Yard included, found it deeply suspicious that Nepalese officials seemed so allergic to foreign intervention.
Raising the question – what exactly did they have to hide?
On the day following the Royal massacre, the slain were given a state funeral, and cremated in front of the one of the holiest Hindu temples in all of Nepal.
As we’ve covered, Dipendra was proclaimed king while comatose in a Kathmandu hospital bed. But just four days later, he slipped away during the night, and was announced dead the following morning.
Upon his passing, a distant relative named Gyanendra Shah ascended to the throne, in a turn of events that surprised him just as much as everyone else.
Some say Gyanendra’s strange behavior in the days that followed were a result of the man’s deep and profound grief.
Others assert otherwise.
In one instance, Gyanendra rather publicly suggested that the Royal massacre was the result an accidental discharge – as in, Dipendra shot his entire family with a fully automatic assault rifle – by accident.
He later defended his decision to publicly suggest such a theory, saying he was bound to tradition to avoid the suggestion that his distant cousin was a murderer. But some have argued that Gyanendra’s public statement was also an attempt to skirt “legal and constitutional hurdles”, and ensure that, if he survived, Dipendra would be exempt from prosecution.
If true, this would constitute a horrifyingly shrewd attempt to seize power.
Perhaps Dipendra was relying on trusted surgeons to save his life following the self-inflicted wound; knowing that, while incapacitated, his distant cousin could be trusted to absolve him of his crimes.
Maybe passing away from the self-inflicted wound simply wasn’t part of Dipendra’s fiendish plan. Maybe his true intention wasn’t to end the royal line forever, but to ensure it’s survival for another thousand years.
On June 12th of 2001, a kina of Hindu ceremony known as a ‘katto’, was held in the Nepalese capital in order to exorcise or banish the spirit of the dead Royals.
A Hindu priest dressed himself in the late King Birendra’s belongings, then rode an elephant out of Kathmandu as a way of symbolizing his exile into death.
The Nepalese citizenry grieved bitterly, and the world wept with them. Yet as the ceremony unfolded, a deep sense of resentment towards Gyanendra began to grow.
Many pointed out that, on the day of the massacre, Gyanendra had rather conveniently been unable to attend the event at which it took place.
Others countered that Gyanendra’s wife and two children did make it to the party, meaning it was highly unlikely he’d agreed to be part of any such plan to end their lives.
However, while every single member of Dipendra’s family met their end that day, Gyanendra’s wife and two children miraculously survived their injuries.
Slowly but surely, in the eyes of many Nepalese citizens, the single most compelling piece of evidence to suggest Gyanendra’s innocence, became one of the most damning suggestions of his guilt.
In the years that followed, elements within the Nepalese Maoist Party claimed that the US Central Intelligence Agency executed the massacre.
Nicknamed ‘Prachanda’, one Communist official asserted that, “multiple people with the mask of the Crown Prince Dipendra were present in the room at one point”.
Prachanda also asserted that there were dramatic inconsistencies between the official version of events, which were endorsed by Gyanendra and his government, and the eyewitness accounts of the medics and police officers who attended the Royal Palace in the aftermath of the massacre.
It was also Prachanda’s opinion that Dipendra was not in fact the perpetrator of the massacre, but yet another of it’s many victims.
He pointed out the fact that the gunshot wound was not where a right-handed shooter would’ve placed the barrel of his weapon, and placed the blame squarely at the feet of the newly crowned King Gyanendra.
But others, perhaps those with much more fruitful imaginations, place their belief in our final theory; one involving an 11th century Hindu mystic.
Gorakhnath was a revered saint, yogi, and a prominent figure in the Nath tradition of Hinduism.
He is believed to have lived during the 11th and 12th centuries, although precise historical details about his life are uncertain due to the hagiographic nature of many accounts.
Gorakhnath is considered one of the influential figures in the development of Hatha and Kundalini Yoga, and is often credited with the spread of yogic teachings across India, as well as the wider region.
Today, he is still revered by millions of Indians and Nepalese, and in both countries, numerous temples and shrines dedicated to him can be found. Gorakhnath is often depicted as a yogi with supernatural powers, and his teachings emphasize the importance of spiritual practice, self-discipline, and the attainment of enlightenment.
Many of the stories detailing his life and works involve him being kind, gentle and understanding. But one such story has a markedly different tone.
According to the legend, the first ruler of Nepal was named King Prithvi, and he is credited with uniting the Kingdom following the conquest of numerous petty kingdoms.
One day, in the late 1760’s the King came across an old holy man, practicing Yoga in the forest.
Being a man of great respect, the King offered the holy man some curd to quench his thirst. But after consuming it, the holy man vomited into the king’s drinking bowl, and demanded he drink it.
Naturally, King Prithvi was repulsed, and tossed the holy man’s fresh vomit onto the ground. But this caused the holy man to fly into a rage, claiming that the refusal to imbibe the fluid of a holy man is tantamount to a mortal sin.
King Prithvi laughed, but this only angered the holy man further, and after focusing all of his divine will, the man put a curse on King Prithvi's bloodline, claiming that his royal lineage would last no longer than ten generations.
Obviously, anyone who puts a curse on you after offering you some puke to drink – is probably playing with a few cards short of a full deck. But upon hearing of the curse, the great yogi Gorakhnath grew ashen.
Gorakhnath claimed that, despite his evident madness, the man was still a very, very powerful yogi; and that his curse should be taken very, very seriously. Some dismissed the warning as far-out nonsense, yet it appears that history did indeed vindicate our curd-vomiting yogi.
King Prithvi was born in April 1743, and if a generation is said to be anywhere between twenty-five and thirty years, this means ten generations is anywhere between 250 to 300 years.
Between the year of King Prithvi’s birth, and the massacre at the Palace Royal Party, 258 years elapses.
Exactly ten generations since the mad yogi declared the Royal family’s doom.
There are many, and perhaps rightfully so, who dismiss the timing of the family’s demise as mere coincidence.
There are many other, much more feasible explanations, but the fact remains that hundreds of thousands of North Indian Hindus believe that Gorakhnath had indeed prophesized the end of the royal lineage.
And with belief and manifestation being so chillingly interlinked sometimes, perhaps the moment young Dipendra learned of it, it ceased to ancient prophecy, and became his very doom.