2.1 Historical Legal Research Approach

The approach: law as an historical artefact — the tracing of institutions, doctrines and statutes through time (the origins, the influences, the evolution's causes). The method: the sources' archaeology — the Lichchhavi inscriptions and the Shah-era avilekh (Nepali Legal System, Semester 4); the Muluki Ain and the Janga Bahadur codification's contexts (Nepali History, Semester 1); the statute's amendment-ladder (the contract law's 2023 → 2056 → 2074 line — Contract-I, Semester 4); the doctrine's migration (the reception of common-law ideas). The tools: documentary criticism (the internal-and-external evidence), chronology, comparison across eras. The strengths: the explanation nothing else gives (why the law is the shape it is), the reform's perspective (the path-dependence's map). The limits: the sources' survival bias (Nepal's archive gaps), the antiquarian temptation (the past studied for its own sake), the present's under-analysis. Nepali exam-anchors: the 1854 Code's history; the judiciary's evolution ladder; the legal- profession's development.