243 ate the khir without knowing that poison had fallen into it. Therefore, he is not guilty of suicide. He died when his alloted time was up. Therefore, he who does not understand the Sastras and says that one of these people is guilty, he, I say, is the guilty one.0 1 know that it is so. What do you think?"9 When the king had spoken the Vetala once again reached the same tree. Thus ends the thirteenth Vetala. NOTES 1. In the valley, Maithili was also used and compositions exist in Bengali, Braj, and Bhojpuri. In Western Nepal, the language of inscriptions is predominantly Sanskrit, though there are some in Nepali ^G. Tucci, Preliminary 'Report on Two Scientific Expeditions in Nepal (Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1956), pp. 25-39' . For a general discussion of the literature of the valley before the conquest of Prthivi Narayan, see Surya Bikram Gyevali, Nepal upatyakako madhyakalin itihas (Kathmandu: Royal Nepal Academy, 2019 B.S.), pp. 211-41. For an early Nepali inscription of the valley, see T.W» Clark, "The Rani Pokhari Inscription, Kathmandu," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies^ Vol. 20, 167-94, 2. For a discussion of the Malla period, see Luciano Petech, Medieval History of Nepal (Rome: Istituto Italiano per II Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1958), pp. 79-171. As Petech states (pp. 81-82), the Malla period extends from 1200 A.D. to the Gorkha conquest in 1768-9, but this is hardly "more than a useful convention" (ibid. p. 81). What is meant here by the "Malla period" is the dynasty founded by Jayasthiti Malla in 1354. It was his descendants who ruled Nepal until the Gorkha conquest and it was under them that Newari became a literary language. Sanskrit, however, was never replaced as the language of religion. 3. At its peak, Nepalese territory included Sikkim in the east, Kumaon and Garhwal in the west, and large sections of the Indian Tarai. Earlier, in 1793, expansion to the north into Tibet had been checked by the intervention of the Chinese.