The main legal point established in the judgment is that there is no authority in Hindu Law or legislative enactments to support the revocation of a will by the birth of a posthumous son.

Subrahmania Aiyar, J.

1. There is no dispute that the all estate which Chenga Reddi left and which has been disposed of by his will, relied on by the plaintiff, was his self-acquisition. By the will he distributed the property in certain proportions among his two wives, his two daughters by the first wife, his sister, his brothers son, his brothers daughter who is the plaintiff and certain others. It was executed on the 7th March 1900 seven days before the death of Chenga Eeddi. The 7th defendant, the posthumous son of Chenga Eeddi by his second wife, the 6th defendant, was born on the 19th November 1900. The finding is to the effect that Chenga Eeddi, from the time of the execution of the will up to his death, was unaware that the 6th defendant was enciente.

2. The question for determination is whether the birth of the 7th defendant had the effect of revoking the will as contended by Mr. Sundara Aiyar on his behalf.

3. Whatever may have been the view held by Vijnaneswara, the great authority of the School of Hindu Law followed in this Presidency, as to the interest devolving on a son by his birth in all the property held by his father, it must now be taken that a son by his birth acquires no sort of interest in so much of the property possessed by the father as is his self-acquisition. This is the basis of the ruling that a father can validly will away his self-acquired property even as against his male issue. The decision to be given, therefore, in the present case, ought in no way to conflict with the recognition of this power of testamentary disposition on the pare of the owner of such property. The ruling, finally upholding the power, was given only so late as 1898 in liao Balwant singh v. Rani Kishori and of course the whole law of wills among Hindus is of recent origin being mainly a development by judicial decisions of the Hindu Law of Gifts. The reason for such development was, of course, the necessity felt for making this part of the personal law of - Hindus suitable to the modern exigencies of their society. It is, therefore, certainly right that the Courts should in administering it, have due regard to the presumable intentions of testators generally viewed in the light of deep-rooted sentiments prevalent among that community, in respect of the claims of male issue on their fathers. This is not a novel view and in support of the Courts deferring to such considerations in the matter, it is sufficient to point out that in laying down that a widow prima facie takes only a limited interest under a grantor devise by her husband, the Courts were altogether influenced by the fact that the general feeling of the community is against women being given absolute powers of alienation and thus being enabled to divert the devolution of the property from the family. Bearing, therefore, in mind the extreme importance attached to the existence of male issue by every Hindu on religious and other grounds and the unlikelihood as a rule of a Hindu father contemplating the total disinheritance of his son even with reference to his self-acquired property, it would seem to be quite a reasonable doctrine to lay down that in circumstances like those of the present case the will is revoked in point of law by the birth of the male issue to the testator subsequent to the making of the will.

4. No Indian authority directly supporting such a view was, however, cited; nor I am aware of any; but this lack of precedent is not surprising since, as already stated, the Hindu Law of wills is of very recent growth. What we have to consider here is whether the view I have just stated ought not to be upheld with reference to the rules of law adopted in analogous cases by systems of jurisprudence of which the law of wills formed an integral and long established part. In the great work of Burge on Colonial and Foreign Laws (Vol. IV, p. 510 etseq) will be found an excellent account of these rules under several such systems and from that chiefly, I take t