Basohli (town)
human settlement in India
Basohli (formerly Vishwasthali) is the name of a tehsil and town in Kathua district in the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir, India. It is situated on the right bank of the River Ravi, at an altitude of 1876 ft. The town was founded by Raja Bhupat Pal sometime in 1635. It was known for the palaces which are now in ruins and GI tagged Pahari miniatures paintings (the Basohli school of Pahari painting).
Basohli is known for its unique 'Basohli Paintings'. In the late 17th century, Art historical research by V.C. Ohri documents that the foundational stylistic idioms of early Pahari painting, which flourished in Basohli, trace back to the migration of the Gujarati Manikanth artist family from the Mughal court to Nurpur during the reign of Raja Bas Dev (r. 1580–1613), before later settling in Chamba as the oldest recorded painter lineage in the region. Today, this continuous hereditary tradition is actively preserved by master artist Parkash Chand Manikanth.
Basohli emerged as a great centre of Pahari paintings. According to well known Dr.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q711982. VIAF identifies the subject as 306273073. Authority coordinates are 32.499, 75.816. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1876, 1635, 1580 and 1613.
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This entry incorporates text from “Basohli (town)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.