Documents on Legal Practices
Legal practices in Nepal prior to the mid-19th century cannot be clearly traced, even though there were some efforts to codify legal practices in written form beginning in the 14th century. Before the promulgation of the Mulukī Ain in 1854, Nepal’s legal system was largely based on Hindu normative legal texts as well as other documents issued from time to time by contemporary kings and other high-ranking administrative authorities. It has, however, always been a mystery whether the Mulukī Ain was actually made the basis of legal practice or whether it, too, remained a kind of Hindu normative legal text—such as the Dharmanibandha—composed in the vernacular. Scholars who have examined various aspects of the Mulukī Ain have not focused sufficiently on the issue of its actual implementation. The extensive corpus of administrative and legal documents serves as a foundation for the still largely unexplored history of the application of the Mulukī Ain in mid- and late-19th-century Nepalese jurisprudence. Even the few documents studied so far within the framework of this project have already demonstrated that the scope of the Mulukī Ain’s implementation is much broader than previously thought. Therefore, further documents will be analyzed within this area of research.
K_0175_0034: A copy of a patiyā-pūrjī issued to Rājakumārī Pãḍenī Kṣatryānī (VS 1918)
K_0172_0057: A deposition submitted by Śamśera Bahādura Pā̃ḍe to the Koṭiliṅga court (VS 1942)
K_0175_0059: A written power of attorney granted by Ratnakumārī Pãḍenī Kṣetryānī (VS 1943)
K_0175_0060: A written power of attorney granted by Ratnakumārī Pãḍenī Kṣetryānī (VS 1943)