The principle of falsa demonstratio non nocet and the intention of the parties are crucial in interpreting deeds and determining property rights.

1. This is a Second Appeal from conflicting decrees. The defendant is the appellant. The suit was for declaration of plaintiff's title to 5/8th of the plaint property and for recovery of this share and also to put up a boundary between the plots the plaintiff and the defendant are entitled to. The whole property is comprised in S. Nos. 137/1A and B and 137/2 and it belonged to Vattavilagom tarwad. It was mortgaged by the tarwad under Ext. A dated 3-6-1093 in favour of one Podiyan Nadar. The mortgage right was acquired by Gnanamuthu Nadar and others, and the equity of redemption devolved on one Padmanabha Pillai of Vattavilagom tarwad. The plaintiff and his brother purchased the equity of redemption from Padmanabha Pillai and the plaintiff later obtained his brother's interest under a Will executed by him. When the plaintiff sought to redeem the property the mortgagees who were living in the property requested that a portion of the property be given to them and that the rest alone be recovered. What they asked for and got was 3/8th of the property. The total extent of the property was wrongly described in the mortgage deed as 6 acres and 16 cents. At the time of release of the mortgage the extent was wrongly assumed to be 6 acres and 66 cents.. Thus in the release deed Ext. D executed by the plaintiff to the mortgagees, the 3/8th and 5/8th shares were described as 2 acres 4934 cents and 4 acres 16% cents, on the assumption that the total extent was 6 acres and 66 cents. The actual extent is only 4 acres and 50 cents and the plaintiff is entitled to 5/8th of the same. It was on these allegations that the plaintiff brought the suit. The defendant who has acquired the rights of the mortgagees contended that he was entitled to the extent of land described in Ext. E and not merely to 3/8th. The trial court upheld the defence contention and dismissed the suit. On appeal, the decree of the trial court was reversed and the plaintiff was given a decree for recovery of 5/8th of the property. The defendant has therefore preferred this Second Appeal.

2. Ext. E is the sale deed executed by the plaintiff in favour of the mortgagees. This describes the property sold to the mortgagees as 32 cents in the western portion of S.No. 137/1B, 1 acre and 17 3/4 cents in the northern portion of the said survey number and 1 acre in the northern portion of S. No. 137/ IA. The total extent given to the mortgagees is thus described as 2 acres 4934 cents. On the strength of this, the defendants claim this area. Learned counsel for the appellant relied on the following passage in Umrao Bapu v. Ramakrishna Bapu and others (A. I. R.1938 Nag. 93):

"The decided cases are relevant not for what they decided but the principle on which the decisions were founded. That principle is to be sought in the well known maxim falsa demonstratio non nocet.

That rule means that if there be an adequate and sufficient description with convenient certainty of what was meant to pass, an erroneous addition to the description will not vitiate it. See (1849) 4 Ex 591. In Durga Prased Singh v. Rajendra Narain Bagchi (1910) 37 Cal. 293 at p. 308 the general principle enunciated in an American case was referred to and it was this that where there are two conflicting descriptions of the subject matter of a grant or two conflicting parts of the same description, that which is the more certain and stable and the least likely to have been mistaken or to have been inserted inadvertently must prevail if it sufficiently identifies the subject matter. Then follows the further proposition based on English and American authorities there cited that preference ought to be given to that element of the description of the subject-matter which is most consistent with the intention of the parties to be collected from other parts of the deed, illumined if necessary by the surrounding circumstances and subsequent conduct of the parties".

3. I am in respectful agreement with this view but the ques