According to Badri Datt Pandey's book History of Kumaon where he quotes Pandit Rudra Datt Pant, - "During the times of the Katyuri Kings, from the Chauki village of Doti, a Kanyakubja Brahmin named Shambhu Sharma came to Kali Kumaon and settled in Uprara village of Pithoragarh district, hence the descendants were called Upretis." According to another source, around 450 A.D. to 550 A.D. Lalchan Bhatta came to Achham District in Nepal from Vidhyanagar, Jalandhar to serve a new king. The highly sought yogi was rewarded as Royal Priest by the king. During his tenure as a Royal Priest he didn’t take any money nor gifts. Due to this the king awarded the great priest the Uparati title. This was the highest title awarded by that king at that time. Therefore, Uparati is meant as someone who is literate and has no desire for earthly wonders. Later on, the wordUparati corrupted to form Upreti. According to an interview with Yogi Narhari Nath in 1996 he stated that, ‘Upreti is not just a caste or a clan but it is an award.’ According to him, there used to live a Rishi named Mudgala in Mugu District of Nepal. It is said that during the Ashvamedha Yajna of Baliraja the chief priest was Vashishtha while secondary priests were the descendants of Rishi Mudgala. Therefore, it is also thought that the word Upa-purohita was twisted to make the surname Upreti.
History
In the same section of his book, Badri Datt Pandey mentions about the famous Pandit Ram Datt Jyotirvidji who says that Uprara/Upretyara, the estate of the then royal priests Upretis in Gangolihat was given to the DravidaVajpayee Brahmin Shivaprasad who came to Kumaon during the reign of Mankoti kings. During the time of the Gorkhas, Pandit Jayakrishna Upreti was a famous General whose descendants continue to live in Almora. Badri Datt Pandey mentions that within Kumaoni Brahmins, the Upretis of Patiya, Jhijhar, and Supakot have a common descent, whereas other Upreti's belong to a different group. He also quotes that Pandit Ganga Datt Upreti claims that a few Upretis are also the original inhabitants of Maharashtra state of the Western India region who later migrated to the Kumaon region. Thus those who claim to have Kanyakubja origins would have migrated to the Himalaya during the Islamic invasions of the twelfth century, whereas the one from Maharashtra would have moved northward along with the Marathas in the seventeenth century. The former seems more plausible as the Chand dynasty who ruled Kumaon from the tenth Century onward, after the reign of the Katyuris, came from Kannauj. They also migrated to Nepal along with other Brahmins from Pithoragarh district under the royal patronage of the Hindu Kingdom when the Kumaon region was under the control of the Gorkhas till the Treaty of Sugauli with British India in 1815 A.D.
