The main legal point established in the judgment is the interpretation of the applicability of Act IV of 1869 to a Hindu marriage after both parties had become Christians, based on the legal principles and rules governing the recognition of marriages in Christian countries and the effect of conversion to Christianity on the validity of the marriage.

Arthur J.H. Collins, C.J.

1. Thapita Peter brought a suit against Thapita Lakshmi, his wife, alleging her adultery with Lunkapalli Gauth, and praying, therefore, that his marriage may be dissolved. The District Judge of Kistna granted a decree dissolving the marriage under the provisions of Act IV of 1869, and the decree now comes before the High Court for confirmation under Section 17 of Act IV of 1869.

2. The petitioner and his wife were married according to the rites of the Hindu religion in 1879, petitioner and his wife being Hindus at that time. About a year after the marriage the petitioners wife left him and has since been living in adultery with the second respondent. In 1882 the petitioner became a Christian, and about 1890 his wife and the second respondent also became Christians. The question to be decided is--can the Courts of this country pass a decree dissolving his marriage under Act IV of 1869 ?

3. Section 1 of the Act enables relief to be granted where the petitioner professes the Christian religion.

4. Section 7 directs that the Courts in India shall act and give relief in all suits and proceedings hereunder on principles and rules which, in the opinion of the said Courts, are, as nearly as may be, conformable to the principles and rules on which the Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes in England acts and gives relief.

5. Divorce is unknown to the Hindu law, but it is clear that if Act IV of 1869 was intended to apply to Hindu marriages, the petitioner would be entitled to relief. Act XXI of 1866 has no application to this case. That Act provides a relief from the marriage tie when one of the parties becomes a Christian, the other still remaining a Hindu.

6. A Hindu marriage is not a monogamous one. The man may lawfully be the husband of many wives at the same time. It is therefore a ceremony inconsistent with marriage as understood in Christendom that the husband should have more than one wife. If the Act IV of 1869 applies to Hindu marriages, a case may arise where a Hindu with more wives than one becomes a Christian and his wives also embrace Christianity. In that case could one of the wives sue her husband for a divorce because he continues to cohabit with one or more of his other wives, as the conversion of the parties to Christianity would not dissolve or make void the husbands previous marriages, oi1 could the Christian husband sue for a divorce from one of his wives on the ground that she had committed adultery.

7. The point to be decided is not without difficulty, but I think that if marriages celebrated according to Hindu rites were intended to be within the scope of the Act, express provision would have been made to meet the difficulties that must arise owing to the fact that the Hindu marriage is not a monogamous one. There are two English cases which serve to illustrate in what cases the English Divorce Court will give relief. In Brinkley v. Attorney-General (L. R., 15 P. D., 76), a British subject married a Japanese woman in Japan according to the forms required by the law of that country, and it was roved that by such a marriage the husband was precluded from marrying any other woman during the subsistence of the marriage. A declaration was granted by the President of the Probate Division declaring (under 21 and 22 Vic., cap., 93) that such marriage was a valid one. In the judgment the President says :

Marriage must be that of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others. Throughout the judgments that have been given on this subject the phrase Christian marriage, marriage in Christendom or some equivalent phrase has been used : that has only been for convenience to express the idea. But the idea that was to be expressed was this, that the only marriage recognized in Christian countries and in Christendom is the marriage of the exclusive kind mentioned.

8. In Hyde v. Hyde (L. R., 1 P. & D., 130), the petitioner, an English subject, married in Utah, in the United States of America, a