All anthems

Nepal

सयौं थुँगा फूलका हामी

Sayaun Thunga Phulka Hami

Hundreds of Flowers

Written 2007

Adopted 2007

Lyrics Pradip Kumar Rai (Byakul Maila)

Music Amber Gurung

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Key Facts

1. It was adopted on 3 August 2007 at the National Planning Commission inside Singha Durbar, weeks after the interim constitution stripped the king of power.
2. Replacing the royal anthem was a Maoist condition during the peace talks that ended Nepal's decade-long civil war.
3. The lyrics were chosen from more than a thousand public submissions; winner Byakul Maila wrote them as an explicitly republican, pluralist poem.
4. In August 2016 the BBC ranked it the third most striking Olympic anthem, praising its brevity and folk-song character.

Lyrics

सयौं थुँगा फूलका हामी, एउटै माला नेपाली सार्वभौम भई फैलिएका, मेची-महाकाली। प्रकृतिका कोटि-कोटि सम्पदाको आँचल वीरहरूका रगतले स्वतन्त्र र अटल। ज्ञानभूमि, शान्तिभूमि, तराई, पहाड, हिमाल अखण्ड यो प्यारो हाम्रो मातृभूमि नेपाल। बहुल जाति, भाषा, धर्म, संस्कृति छन् विशाल अग्रगामी राष्ट्र हाम्रो, जय जय नेपाल।।

Translations are non-official and intended to convey meaning, not replace originals

Analysis

Editorial

Nepal adopted "Sayaun Thunga Phulka Hami" on 3 August 2007, when the speaker of the interim parliament, Subas Chandra Nemwang, signed it into law inside Singha Durbar. It was the closing musical chapter of the country's break with monarchy: the royal anthem "Shriman Gambhir," sung since 1962, had become unsingable for a republic, and the Maoists had insisted on its replacement as part of the peace process. The new lyrics, by the poet Pradip Kumar Rai, who writes as Byakul Maila, won out of more than a thousand entries submitted to a public competition; Amber Gurung set them to music. The text reads as a deliberate manifesto of pluralism, picturing Nepal as one garland strung from many flowers, stretched across Terai, hill and Himalaya, between the Mechi and the Mahakali.