2.3.3 Custom

• Meaning: a long-established practice of a community, accepted as binding by those who practise it — law from below; the historical school's honoured source (Savigny: custom is the Volkstgeist speaking; Unit 3.2).• Ingredients of a valid custom (the classic list):antiquity (immemorial usage — no living memory of its beginning), continuity, certainty, reasonableness (not contrary to morals or statute), consistency, compulsory force (opinio necessitatis — observed as of right, not courtesy), conformity with statute (custom yields to enacted law).• Kinds:custom without law (binding by itself) vs custom according to law (recognised by statute); local vs general custom.• Nepal: the deep source. The Muluki Ain 1854 codified and ranked custom; guthi law among Newars, the badghar among Tharus, kipat autonomy among Limbus and the hill mukhiya tradition all ran as living customary law (your Nepali History and Sociology units carry the detail); today's Civil Code 2074 expressly accommodates custom in family and inheritance matters where it does not contradict statute — custom as a residual, permitted source, no longer a rival sovereign.