June 6, 1505 Earthquake: Nepal-India

Reference #12711:

At first sight, these accounts suggest that on 6 July 1505 there was an earthquake which affected Agra and Kabul[...]its effects extending over an area of nearly 1200 km in length. Such an event should have been of unprecedented size[...]careful reading of these texts shows that two separate events: one in Hindustan [06 June] and another [06 July] in Afghanistan, have been amalgamated.

They show that the shocks which were felt in Agra were from a large earthquake which had its epicentral area in northwest Nepal and southwest Tibet[...]According to Tibetan sources, the earthquake occurred at dawn on the fifth or the sixth day of the fifth lunar month of the wodd-ox year in the 9th Tibetan sixty-year cycle, or on 6 or 7 June 1505.

We are told that the regions of Guge, Purang and the western Nepal hilly country betweeen Tiber and India were devastated. In the district of Lo Mustang in north-western Nepal, from where we have eyewitness counts, damage was very heavy. Monasteries and temples for the most part were destroyed; tens of thousands of "sentient beings" were killed, and trees and forests were extensively damaged. Many manor houses collapsed completely. Damage extended south of Lo in the Thakali area of the Kali Gandaki river valley in Nepal, where many people were killed.

Although Badau says that [Agra] was particularly badly affected, he does not mention anything specific regarding damage or loss of life.

Reference #4084:

The central Himalayan 1505 earthquake may have been Mw ≥ 8.2 based on its probable rupture area. It destroyed monasteries along a 500km segment of southern Tibet, in addition to demolishing structures in Agra and other towns in northern India (Jackson, 2002; Ambraseys and Jackson, 2003; Bilham and Ambraseys, 2004).

Damage in northern India was considerable during the 1505 event and it is likely that its recurrence would damage many of the large cities along the Ganges and Jumna rivers through shaking, and from the effects of extensive liquefaction.

Reference #12927:

30N, 82E, Mw 8.2-8.9. On 6 June 1505 at about dawn (6 am) a great earthquake, or a sequence of major earthquakes, shook almost one-quarter of the Himalayan arc and contiguous parts of southern Tibet from east of Dehra Dun to the Thakola graben in Nepal [...] Although the 6 June 1505 earthquake damaged several monasteries in Tibet and the Thakola graben region of Nepal, and villages in southern Tibet north of Kathmandu, no record of this earthquake has survived in Kathmandu. Shaking was also reported from the town of Agra on the southern edge of the Gangetic Plain. Prior to Sikander Lodi’s move of his capital from Delhi to Agra, the city was of minor importance. Its fort at Badalgarh was damaged by the earthquake, and its reconstruction in 1505 (Lal 1980) was accompanied by expansion of the city to become a suitable residence for Sikander Lodi and his ministers and military leaders to administer his expanded dominions.