SETHURAMAN, J.

The assessee is a dealer in cotton ropes and coir products. He returned a total and taxable turnover of Rs. 52, 046.41 and Rs. 3, 342.78. The total and taxable turnovers were fixed by the assessing authority at Rs. 9, 58, 581.00 and Rs. 5, 01, 250.00 respectively. The dispute was on a turnover of Rs. 3, 87, 316 relating to sales of ropes. The ropes are called and there were other ropes required by agriculturists. The assessing authority considered that these items did not fall within item 4 of the Third Schedule as goods exempted from tax by section 8 of the Tamil Nadu General Sales Tax Act. The Appellate Assistant Commissioner confirmed the assessment as made by him. The assessee took the matter on appeal to the Sales Tax Appellate Tribunal. The Tribunal, after elaborately considering the several decisions cited before it, came to the conclusion that it is difficult to conceive of a textile shop selling rope or a person doing business of the type of the assessee selling any commonly accepted textile article like cloth in his shop just because he sells ropes. In other words, it proceeded on the view that a person requiring rope does not go to a textile shop to get these ropes and, under the circumstances, the assessee's case that ropes sold by the assessee would fall under entry 4 of the Third Schedule was not accepted. There was an alternative argument before the Tribunal that the assessee was dealing in yarn and these were second sales of yarn. The Tribunal negatived this contention also. It was pointed out that the alteration from yarn to rope by the process of twisting altered the commercial character of the goods. The result was that both the contentions of the assessee failed and the matter is now in revision before us.Item 4 of the Third Schedule as it was then in the statute ran as follows :

"All varieties of textiles (other than durries, carpets, druggets and pure silk cloth) made wholly or partly of cotton, staple fibre, rayon, artificial silk or wool including handkerchiefs, towels, napkins, dusters, cotton velvets and velveteen, tapes, niwars and laces and hosiery cloth in lengths."

The learned counsel for the assessee contended that the word" textile"

did not require that there should be a warp and woof pattern, and that even where yarn was arranged in parallel lines and pasted together, it has been considered to be a textile. It would therefore, according to him, follow that yarn which was merely twisted in the shape of ropes under consideration here should also retain the character of textile. We are unable to agree with this submission. As rightly pointed out by the Tribunal, one does not go to the textile shop for the purpose of getting this kind of yarn, nor does one go to the assessee's shop for getting textile. The two varieties of goods are so wholly different that both cannot be grouped under "textiles" which would have to be understood in the ordinary and accepted commercial sense.

The Supreme Court in a recent decision, Porritts & Spencer (Asia) Ltd. v. State of Haryana pointed out that the word "textile" must be interpreted according to its popular sense, meaning that sense which people conversant with the subject-matter with which the statute is dealing would attribute to it. Their Lordships referred to the Customs Tariff Act where there was a reference to "textile fabrics" and in connection with "dryer felts", which was under consideration in that case, and pointed out that the inclusion of "dryer felts" in the Customs Tariff Act under the head "textile fabrics" would clearly show that "dryer felts" which were "woven textile felts .... of a kind commonly used in paper-making machinery" were regarded in common parlance, according to the sense of ordinary traders and merchants, as textile fabrics. Therefore, the test to be applied is whether under common parlance or by the commercial community, the ropes in question are taken as "textiles". The result of the test would be clearly