History
Nepal Sambat was started in 879 AD during the reign of King Raghav Dev to commemorate the payment of all the debts of the Nepalese people by a Nepalese trader named Sankhadhar Sakhwa. According to the legend, the astrologer of the king of Bhaktapur calculated the auspicious time and date when sand dug at the confluence of the Bhacha Khusi and Bishnumati rivers in Kathmandu would contain gold.
So the king sent a team of porters to Kathmandu to collect sand at the special hour. A local merchant, Sankhadhar Sakhwa, saw them resting with their baskets of sand at a traveler's shelter at Maru. He thought it strange that people should come all this distance to get sand. So he talked the porters into dumping their load at his home, convincing them that they could always get more. Later, Sankhadhar found gold in his sand, while the king of Bhaktapur was left with a pile of ordinary sand. Sankhadhar used the windfall to repay everybody's debts and cancel their IOUs and start a new calendar.
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