The main legal point established in the judgment is the importance of the language used in the Partition Deed and the actions of the parties involved in determining the nature of the property as joint family property or self-acquired property.

King, J.

1. This appeal arises from a suit brought by a son (plaintiff l) against his father (defendant 1) for partition. There are other parties of lesser importance, plaintiff ls minor son (plaintiff 2), and minor sister (plaintiff 3) and various alienees from defendant 1 (defendant 2 to 5), but it will be convenient for the purposes of this judgment to refer the son and father as plaintiff and defendant simply. The plaintiff has obtained a decree from Ananthakrishna Ayyar, J. and defendant appeals. The question at issue in the appeal is whether the property in suit which, subject She setting aside of alienations, is valued by the plaintiff at Rs. 9,000, is joint family property or the self-acquired property of the defendant. It is common ground that the defendant did not sue-oft to any ancestral property, and that the first item of property which he acquired was a house site in the name of his wife Rangammal in 1897 for which he paid Rs. 150. At that time defendants father was dead, and defendant was one of three brothers. Plaintiff was not yet born. In March 1898 the three brothers executed a partition deed, as result of which defendant retained this house site after paying Bs. 50 each to his two brothers. Defendant very soon afterwards built a house upon this site which is now valued by plaintiff at Rs. 6,000 and by prospering in his trade of cutting and polishing jewels acquired various other properties. Plaintiff was isorh in 1901 and was brought up by defendant arid Rangammal.

2. Rangammal died in December 1919 shortly after plaintiff had become a major, and within a few months defendant married a second wife (as he says) or (as plaintiff says) brought a mistress into the house. The coming of this woman, gave rise to an estrangement between the father and the son; and very soon the son, who was married in 1920, went and lived apart from his fattier. In 1921 plaintiff joined the Postal Department and i3 now permanently employed there. In 1932 plaintiff1 brought this suit for partition. These are the undisputed facts of the case. Now the partition deed of 1898 is a document of very great importance, and upon its interpretation much will depend. The deed shows that it deals with two items of property. The first is the sale proceeds (Rs. 130) of a house-site which had. been acquired in 1898 by one of the brothers in the name of his wife, Bs, 43-5-4 of this money was paid to each Of the three brothers. The second in the. house site which defendant had. purchased in the name of his wife. This, as already stated, was to be retained by defendant on payment of Rs. 50 to each of his two brothers. The result of the partition therefore is to give an exact one-third share to each of the brothers although one of them contributed nothing to what was to be divided. Each of the two house-sites is described in fcha deed as the self acquired property of fche brother in the name of whose wife that sale deed stood. The learned trial Judge in construing this deed does not refer to this description of the property in the deed as self-acquired, but holds that the property was acquired as joint family : property by the three brothers, relying upon the presumption of Hindu law formulated in para 228 of Edn. 7 of Maynes famous text book. But to apply this presumption it is surely necessary to hold that the property must have bean acquired by the joint labours of the members of the family, see Sudarsanam Maistri v. Narasimhulu Maistri (1902) 25 Mad 149, and in this case we have no assertions in the deed itself to negative any such fact, viz. (1) that each house-Bite is described as self-acquired property, and (2) that the brother who acquired no property himself had been living for five or six years separately from the other two. In the face of these recitals is was not argued hera for the plaintiff that these properties were acquired as joint family properties but it was argued in the alternative that by this very act of partition the "def