His Holiness the Dalai Lama Inaugurates Royal Kangra Museum [Wednesday, 6 April 2011, 6:05 p.m.]

DHARAMSHALA:
His Holiness the Dalai Lama today graced the opening of a museum
dedicated to Maharaja Sansar Chand, the erstwhile king of Kangra and a
descendant of Katoch Dynasty which is considered to be one of the
oldest surviving royal dynasty in the world.Addressing the
inauguration ceremony, Kalon Tripa Prof Samdhong said: “It is a great
honour for all of us to have His Holiness the Dalai Lama at the
official opening of Maharaja Sansar Chand Museum. The museum gives the
entire glimpse of the millenia-old history of Kangra’s dynasty, culture
and art.”Kalon Tripa said a museum is a centre for
preservation, display and research. It is not merely a destination of
tourists but it should be a centre of learning and research.””So
this museum would greatly help us in understanding the history of
Kangra in years to come. Kangra has been a valley of Buddhist
monasteries and temples but people have forgotten them with the passage
of time,” he said.Kalon Tripa spoke on the importance of
efforts to be made to excavate the historic site in Kangra so that it
will give a new dimension to the history of India as well as that of
Kangra.Speaking on the occasion, His Holiness the Dalai Lama
said: “I don’t know much about the history of Kangra even though I have
been living here for the past 50 years. But today during my visit here
to this exhibition of artifacts related with the royal dynasty of
Kangra, I have learned something new about the region’s history.
Similarly, even if these antiquities are just memorabilia, it will
certainly bring alive Kangra’s hundreds of years old history in the
interest of the visitors,” His Holiness added. Maharaja Sansar
Chandra inherited the throne of Kangra when he was just 10 years old.
By the age of 21 he had defeated the Mughals and had won back his
ancestral fort of Kangra. True to the saying “He who hold’s the Fort
rules the hills” the young Maharaja ushered in an age of prosperity and
the Indian renaissance of paintings, the Kangra Group which supervises
the museum said in its website.The period 1786-1805 was the
Golden age of Kangra. Maharaja Sansar Chandra established law and order
in his vast empire, at its peak it his empire stretched from
Lahaul-Spiti to the plains of Hoshiarpur [18000 sq.miles].-Day in pictures