The central legal point established in the judgment is that the alienation of inam lands is not absolutely prohibited as unlawful, except to preserve the rights of the Government.

Sadasiva Aiyar, J.

1. The plaintiff is the appellant. This second appeal relates only to plaint items 1, 2, 6, 7, and 8. He brought the suit among other reliefs for a declaration that the attachment and sale of the items of the plaint lands in execution of the money decree against his father, the 4th defendant, are invalid as the lands are unenfranchised inam lands, and as their attachment and sale are therefore prohibited by law. Both the lower courts decided against the plaintiffs contention.

2. The only question argued before us is whether unenfranchised inam lands which had been granted, not for the performance of future services either public or private, but as a pure matter of favour for the maintenance of the donee and his heirs are incapable of alienation and whether such aliena tion is prohibited by law or whether such alienation cannot be allowed as being against public policy. In Sundaramurthi Mudali v. Vallinayaki Ammal (1863) 1 M.H.C.R. 465, it was held that each holder of a shrotriem inam which had been granted for only 3 lives (namely, one Thanappa Mudali, his son, if any, and the sons son, if any), could not be alienated, by will by the adopted son of the 1st grantee (Thanappa Mudali) who died without issue. The grant there seems not to have been of the land itself but only of the land revenue. Scotland, C.J. (with whom Frere, J. concurred,) citing the authorities on the subject which were then few and after considering the Regulations 4 of 1831,31 of 1836 and 21 of 1838 held that shrotriems are in the nature of estates tail in strict settlement and that alienation to a stranger by will was therefore invalid. There are however these two material distinctions between the facts of that case and facts of the present case : (1) the grant in that case was strictly confined to three generations, whereas in the present case it was a heriditary grant to continue from generation to generation: (2) the grant there was of land revenue to which Madras Regulation 4 of 31 directly applied, whereas the present was a grant of the land itself the case is therefore not governed by the three regulations mentioned in that case or by the pensions Act of 1871 which superseded those reugulations. (I do not lay stress on the fact that the grant there was called shrotriem grant whereas the grant in the present case is called Bhattavritthi grant as there is no distinction in principle between the two kinds of grants.) In A. Vissuppu v. A. Ramajogi (1865) 2 M.H.C.R. 341 Holloway and Inness, JJ. criticise the decision in Sundaramurthi Mudali v. Vallinayaki Ammal (1863) 1 M.H.C.R. 465 and point out the distinction between the public service Inams governed by Regulation 4 of 1831 which are made statutorily inalienable by Section 2 of that Regulation and mere personal Inams, some classes of which inams alone fell under Regulation 4 of 1831. It was decided in the case in A. Vissuppu v. Ramajogi that the inam Commissioners certification and declaration that the inam was inalienable, was of no value and that unless there is a statutory prohibition, contracts of alienation would be valid. There, the inam seems to have consisted of the lands them-selves and not the land revenue and the learned Judges distinguish Sundaramurthi Mudali v. Vallinayaki Ammal (1863) 1 M.H.C.R. 465 on that ground also. In Gunnaiyan v. Kamakshi Iyer (1902) I.L.R. 26 M. 39, the following observations of Bashyam Iyengar, J. occur at page 345 : "According to the theory of the common law of the land applicable to hereditary grants of public revenue as inam in favour of individuals and to the interpretation of such crown grants, succession, in such cases, is or at any rate, is supposed to be, limited to the undivided brothers and to the direct lineal heirs, including a daughters son, of the last incumbent, as also his widow and failing them, to the direct lineal heirs of the original grantee. And under that law, it is or it is supposed to be, competent for Government to