Raghava Rao, J.-The appellants here-Sri Bhagavathi Amman Temple represented by three of its pujari trustees-sued in the Court of the Subordinate Judge of Coimbatore for recovery of the lands described in plaint A schedule and for profits in respect thereof. The three trustees representing the temple alleged that defendants 1 to 11 were tenants at will liable to be evicted and that defendants 13 to 15 were their co-trustees who not having joined them in suing were impleaded as pro forma defendants. The 12th defendant was the Madras Hindu Religious Endowments Board who like defendants 13 to 15 supported the case of the plaintiffs-trustees that the suit lands which had been originally granted by a Mysore King and were later confirmed by the East India Company and later still by the British Indian Government at the time of the Inam Settlement belonged to the deity in both the warams. It was also part of the plaint case that the decree of the District Munsif’s Court of Dharapuram in O.S. No. 225 of 1939 on its file dated 27th September, 1940, was null and void, in so far as it wrongly held, in confirmation of the appellate order of the District Collector in certain proceedings for resumption of the suit lands under section 44-B of the Madras Hindu Religious Endowments Act, that the grant was only of the melwaram. The contesting defendants maintained inter alia that the grant was only of the melwaram as, according to them, rightly held by the learned District Munsif of Dharapuram in the former suit, that the former decision operated as res judicata in the way of the present action, and that they and their ancestors had been in possession of the suit land from time immemorial and in any event acquired a right to the kudiwaram by prescription. The learned Subordinate Judge in the Court below found against the plea of res judicata but otherwise upheld the defence and dismissed the suit. The plaintiffs have accordingly appealed.

Mr. B.V. Viswanatha Ayyar, the learned advocate for the appellants, has argued before us that the grant ought to have been, on the material available, chiefly furnished by Exhibits P-1, P-2, extracts of the inam statement and the Inam Fair Register relating to the suit inam, held to cover both the warams and that the finding of the learned Subordinate Judge that the defendants are entitled to the kudiwaram by adverse possession is erroneous in law as well as on the facts. On the other hand, Mr. Ramanatha Ayyar, the learned advocate for the respondents, has not only maintained that the conclusions of the learned Subordinate Judge on these two points are correct but also urged that the learned Subordinate Judge ought to have accepted the plea of res judicata.

With the first contention of the appellants’ learned advocate we agree. What is disclosed by the inam documents is that the grant was to the temple of a Sarvadumbala inam of lands specifically described by boundaries, in respect of which the assessment payable to Government but for the rent-free character of the grant would have been Rs. 31-8-2 and which at the time were under letting by the pujari in charge to the cultivators on a kandayam basis and were fetching produce which the pujari utilised for naivedyam to the deity. The description of the income in Exhibit P-1 as Rs. 31-8-2 which is shown in Exhibit P-2 as in fact the assessment payable to the Government on the land but for the grant, does not, in our opinion, warrant the inference that the grant was in the nature of a mere remittance to the inamdar, the temple, of the rent payable to the Government by tenants already in occupation. There is no reference in either Exhibit P-1 or Exhibit P-2 to any such tenants. On the other hand, the only reference to tenants, which is to be found only in Exhibit P-1 is to tenants to whom the pujari himself leased out the lands on a kandayam basis and from whom he was in perception of profits which were however used “for distribution to the deity”. For the appe