RAJU GRAMANY Vs. AMMANI AMMAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE property in dispute, a house, was admittedly the acquisition of the deceased owner Thayammal, a woman of the Sudra class. In the absence of any evidence on the point, the Judge rightly took the property to have been Thayammal's absolute estate descendible ns her stridhanam in the general and non-technical sense of the term according to the Mitakshara. THE Judge in our opinion also rightly held that as between the only relatives of hers surviving her, the plaintiff the, sister of Thayammal was entitled to succeed in preference to the defendant who is the plaintiff's son, in the view adopted by the Judge and not seriously controverted in the argument before us, that Thayammal had not been married in any of the approved forms. THE paramount authority on a question such as this is of course in this Presidency the Mitakshara, and, according to it, the plaintiff as the daughter of Thayammal's father takes precedence over the defendant, his daughter's son, though the estate which the plaintiff thus takes would be but a limited estate. On behalf of the defendant, our attention was drawn to the text of Brihaspati quoted and explained in Venkatasubramaniam Chetti v. Thayarammah I.L.R. 21 Mad. 263 at p. 267 and it was contended that according to it the plaintiff has no right to Thayammal's estate as against the defendant who is named in the text while she is not. This text no doubt is cited in Smriti Chandrika, the Madhaviya, the Saraswativilasa and the Vyavaharanirnaya which are of more or less authority in this Presidency. THE comments upon the text in the last work show how differently it has been interpreted. In no view does the text seem reconcilable with the rules of descent deducible from the Mitakshara and it is therefore not surprising that Vigneswara omits all reference to it. THE reference to the text in the other commentaries does not suggest any consensus among the authors of them as to the precise application of the text. Nor is there anything to show that, as a matter of usage, the text is followed in circumstances like those of the present case in preference to the general Mitakshara doctrine as applicable thereto. Having regard to the considerations relied on in Mwthappudayan V/s. Ammani Ammal I.L.R. 21 Mad. 58 at p. 62 and Salemma V/s. Lutchmana Reddi I.L.R. 21 Mad. 100 at pp. 103, 104, we think we should hold that the Smriti Chandrika which alone is capable of being understood as giving the relations mentioned in the test a definite place in the line of heirs in the way pointed out by Sir Gurudas Banerjee ( Hindu Law of Inheritance and Stridhana, 2nd edition, pp. 373 and 389), viz., immediately after the husband or the parents as the case may be, cannot out weight the Mitakshara, and. as already stated, under the latter the plaintiff as the daughter of Thayammal's father has a better title than the defendant who is only his daughter's son. THE appeal fails and is dismissed with costs.