(10) How did the Muluki Ain, 2020 B.S. reform the criminal law?

The four pre-codification eras (the tour): Kirant period (c. 800 B.C.E.-300 C.E.): customary and oral law — tribal norms administered by elders and the king-as-judge; offences handled by composition (compensation) and feud-management, religious expiation for ritual wrongs; no written codes survive; Licchavi period (c. 300-880 C.E.): the first documented legal order — the inscriptions (abhilekh) of Manadeva and Amshuvarma: a king-centred judiciary; fines as the standard sanction (theft, cattle-trespass, boundary encroachment); delegated local adjudication (the gramik); dharmashastra's influence; Malla period (c. 1200-1769 C.E.): the classical maturity — written legal instruments (the edicts: price controls, water-sharing, criminal prohibitions with fixed punishments); Jayasthiti Malla's comprehensive social code (the Manava Nyaya Shastra tradition); dharmashastra's caste-graded sanctions; Ram Shah of Gorkha's legendary justice (the incorruptible court's proverb); the sanctions' palette: fines, imprisonment, mutilation, capital punishment, banishment; Shah period (1769-1846, to codification): unification's royal administration — decrees (sanads, lalmohars), ad hoc commands, pandits' advice; offences against the state (treason, desertion) growing with war; Bhimsen Thapa's centralization; scattered regulatory ains (the codification's precursors); the system's arbitrariness making codification the reformist demand — the political chaos after the Kot massacre (1846) handing the task to the Ranas.