The main legal point established in the judgment is that the nominations made by Bharat in 1918 were invalid as they violated the constitution of the muth by attempting to partition the office of mohant and the muth property. The court also clarified that the Will of 1908, appointing the plaintiff as the chief chela and successor, was not effectively revoked by the Will of 1918, and the plaintiff, being the senior chela, was entitled to succeed to the mohantship.

JUDGMENT

Walmsley, J. - The questions raised in this appeal are rather out of the ordinary. They relate to the right to succeed to a mohantship and to enjoy possession of the property belonging to the foundation.

2. The appellant is the plaintiff, Gobinda Ramanuj Das, commonly called Chhota Gobinda to distinguish him from another Gobinda, the Gobinda through whom the defendant claims.

3. In the District of Midnapur there is a muth called the Nayaganj Bora Asthal: it has subordinate Asthals, one of them at Shyamchandpur. The Thakurs installed in the muth are Sri Sri Gopinath Jiu and Raghunath Jiu and the sheba is preformed by members of the Ramanuj section. Nothing is known of the foundation of the muth. The earliest document on the record is one of 1841 by which one Nitai Singh gave various pieces of land to the then mohant Lachman for the purpose of carrying on the sheba of Sri Sri Gopinath Jiu, and of another Thakur Sri Sri Sitaram Jiu to be installed at Shyamchandpur.

4. Lachman was succeeded by Bharat Ramanuj Das, on the strength of a will or a deed of nomination made in 1878. There was, so far as we know, no dispute about Bharat's succession.

5. In 1908 Bharat was growing old, and he then made a will by which he appointed the plaintiff as his principal chela and successor. He lived, however, for ten years longer, and a few days before his death, he made two documents, one in favour of the plaintiff, the other in favour of the other Gobinda, or Bara Gobinda as he is called by the former he appointed Chhota Gobinda to be paricharak mohant of Shyamchandpur, while by the latter he appointed Bara-Gobinda to be "gadinashin mohant like myself."

6. On the death of Bharab, Bara Gobinda applied to the Collector under the Registration Act for the entry of his name in place of Bharati's in regard to some of the property belonging to the muth. Chhota Gobinda objected, but afterwards on 15th March 1325 the two executed mutual ekrarnamas, which for the time composed their differences. A year later on 18th February 1920, Bara Gobinda died, leaving a will by which ha appointed the first defendant, Ram Charan to be his principal chela and successor, and the plaintiff's case is that Ram Charan with the help of Shyamal Das, his uncle, the second defendant, and Brojo Mohan Das the cook of the Noyaganj Asthal, the third defendant, is keeping him out of possession of the properties of the muth.

7. The case for the defence is that any nomination made by Bharat in the deed of 1908 was cancelled by the later deeds of 1918, that the plaintiff acquiesced in the arrangements made by Bharat's deeds of 1918, that Bara Gobinda succeeded to the gadinashin mohantship in accordance with Bharat's nomination of 1918, and that be in due course nominated the defendant Ram Charan to the mohantship shortly before his death.

8. This narrative serves to set out the principal points of difference. For the plaintiff it is contended that the nomination once made in 1908 could not be set aside by Bharat, that Bharat, as a matter of fact, did not know what he was doing, when he executed the later deeds on the eve of his death, that the plaintiff is not bound by his assent expressed in the ekrarnama of 1919, that Bara Gobinda did not really nominate Ram Charan, and that, if he made a deed nominating him he did not understand what he was doing, and lastly that the disposition made by Bharat in 1918 was invalid because it involved the division of the office and the partition of property belonging to the muth.

9. Other questions were raised in the lower Court; for example it was said that Bara Gobinda was a leper and could never have become mohunt, and that plaintiff was disqualified by lameness. Nothing, however, was said before us on those points, and I shall not allude to them further, The substantial questions are those that I have mentioned in the previous paragraph, and I shall confine my attention to them.

10. Nothing is known of the history of the muth: it may be very ancien