The Nepalese Gehendra Rifle,One of the lesser known gunmakers in the world in the 19th century, Nepa

The Nepalese Gehendra Rifle,One of the lesser known gunmakers in the world in the 19th century, Nepal had created some interesting designs, including a crank turned machine gun called the “Bira Gun”.  When the British adopted the Martini Henry breechloading rifle in 1871, the Nepalese also wanted to get in on the martini bandwagon.  Although Nepal was a close ally of Britain, supplying the empire with its famous Gurkha regiments, the British were wary of letting the secrets of their star military rifle go.  Nepal asked that the British send a sample of the Martini Henry.  In return the British sent them a rifle that could easily be mistaken for a Martini Henry, but was definitely not a Martini Henry.  What they sent was an earlier rifle that had failed the 1870 military trials.  Made by Westley Richards, the rifle used a Peabody action which looked similar, but was markedly different from the Martini action.When the Nepalese received the rifle, they reverse engineered it and began production of their own model called the Gehendra rifle.  While engineering the Gehendra, the Nepalese fixed flaws in the design which caused the earlier Westely Richards design to fail in the military trials.  They also improved the action, making it stronger and more reliable.  What resulted was an accurate, dependable, and rugged breechloading rifle chambered in .577-.450.  The Gehendra rifle was issued to Gurkha units along with Sniper Enfield rifles.  They continued to be used up to World War I when they were replaced with Lee Enfield bolt action rifles.  -- source link

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