Nanyadeva founded the Karnat dynasty in 1097 CE, establishing his capital at the citadel of Simraungadh on what is now the India–Nepal border and ruling the greater Mithila region for some fifty years. His reign opened a cultural golden age whose patronage of scholars laid the ground for the great Maithili flowering that followed.
Remarkably for a king, Nanyadeva was himself a musicologist: he composed melodies and set down his theory in two Sanskrit treatises, the Sarasvati-hridayalankara and the Bharata-bhashya, analysing how musical notes evoke particular emotions. So respected was his learning that the thirteenth-century master Sharngadeva cited him as an authority — a philosopher-king very much in the old Janaka mould.