JUDGMENT

1. This appeal is from a determination of the Court below, contained in a judgment, dated the 5th April 1916, upon a question raised u/s 47 of the Code in regard to the construction of a decree.

2. The decree (dated the 27th March 1905) was obtained, by the respondent Raja Sarat Chandra Roy against Raja Surja Kanta Acharjya, the predecessor of the appellant, Raja Soshi Kanta Acharjya. There was an appeal to this Court which was dismissed on the 22nd May 1900. A further appeal to the Privy Council was also dismissed on the 20th July 1914 Maharaja Surja Kanta Acharjya Bahadur v. Sarat Chandra Roy Chowdhury 25 Ind. Cas. 309 : 18 C.W.N. 1281 : 27 M.L.J. 365 : 16 M.L.T. 290 : (1914) M.W.N. 757 : 6 Bom.L.R. 925 : 1 L.W. 807 : 20 L.J. 563 (P.C.). The result was that the decree of the first Court stood confirmed without modification.

2. The suit related to a considerable area of land in the possession of the appellant, which the respondent claimed as part of an estate which he had purchased at a sale held for arrears of revenue. The respondent's success was not complete but partial It was held that he was entitled to so much of the land as fell within the boundaries of his estate as shown in a revenue survey map of 1848. This is plain from the judgments delivered and is not disputed. There is also no dispute as to the trijunction point or the starting point from which a surveyor demarcating the boundaries in the locality would commence his measurements. It is agreed that this point was conclusively fixed by the Trial Judge, The present dispute arises in this way. A map prepared by an amin, who had made a local enquiry under the direction of the Trials Court, purports to show the boundaries according to the revenue survey map. The decree at first sight, at any rate, adopts the amin's map. Towards the close of his judgment, however, the learned Subordinate Judge referred to the variation between the magnetic north and the true north. The amin apparently had made no allowance for suck variation, and the point at issue is whether the respondent is entitled to have the variation taken into account for the purpose of delivery of possession or whether under the terms of the decree he is bound by the amin's map. The point is not touched upon in the judgments of this Court and the Privy Council.

3. The words of the decree are as follows: "it is ordered that this suit be partially decreed, that the plaintiff's right be declared to so much of the disputed land as falls within the boundary lines of the revenue survey map of 1848 of Mouza Niz Shampur Bharpur comprised in map No. 218 of the touzi of the Mohalla Collectorate, laid down in the amin's map.

4. The original decree is in Bengali but with every respect for the learned Subordinate Judge, there is at any rate no patent ambiguity either in the original or in the translation. The Bengali expression (a miner Naksha ankita) which represents the words laid down in the amin's map, refers, as clearly as those words do, to the boundary lines of the survey map. According to the grammatical sense the boundary lines of the survey map are taken to be those laid down or shown in the amin's map. The meaning is not the boundary lines of the survey map of the village of which the amin has made a map. Apart from the language such a reference to the amin's map would be entirely useless. What is called the ordering portion of the judgment, which is in English, puts the meaning beyond doubt. The words there are: "It is ordered that these five suits are partially decreed in this way: that the plaintiff's right to the portions of the disputed lands shown in the amin's maps as falling within the boundary lines given in the revenue survey maps of 1848 of the mouzahs in question be declared as appertaining to his zemindari." The decree, therefore, as already stated, on the face of it adopts the amin's map; if it were not for the passage in the judgment which creates the difficulty, there would be no room at all