A Hindu family, migrating from one part of India to another, is presumed to continue to observe the Shastras by which it was governed, and the presumption can only be displaced by showing that the immigrant has renounced the law of his place of origin and adopted the law of the place to which he had migrated.

G.N.Prasad, J.

1. This second appeal has been preferred by the sole defendant in a suit for partition. The suit property is 2.65 acres (wrongly stated by the learned Munsif, Shri R. J. Pandey, as 2.25 acres) of culturable land in village Dugni, P. S. Saraikella, District Singbhum. This land admittedly belonged to two brothers, Jagar-nath Kumhar and Madhai Kumhar. The plaintiff is the widow and the defendant the brother of Jagarnath.

2. According to the plaintiff:

(i) The parties are Bengali Kumhars and governed by the Dayabhaga School of Hindu Law;

(ii) Her husband died some 20 years before the institution of the suit (the suit Was filed on the 15th May, 1967);

(iii) For nearly two years after her husbands death, the parties lived jointly in mess and property, but quarrels and differences arose and so the plaintiff separated in mess but the property continued to remain joint;

(iv) Being a female, the plaintiff was unable to take part in cultivation of the land. So there was a panchaiti whereby it Was arranged that the defendant would cultivate the entire land and give to the plaintiff 12 maunds of paddy every year as representing her share of the produce of the suit land;

(v) This arrangement continued until a year before the present suit, when trouble again arose and the defendant stopped giving her share of the produce to her;

(vi) The plaintiff, therefore, asked for an amicable partition but the same having been refused, she has instituted the present suit.

Upon these averments, the plaintiff prayed for a partition decree in respect of a moiety share in the suit land.

3 According to the defendant:

(i) The ancestors of the parties had never any concern with Bengal. They were permanent resident of Seraikella in Bihar. They are governed by the Mitakshara School of Hindu Law and by the law of Seraikella under which a widow did not inherit her husbands property but was only entitled to maintenance from the agnates of her husband who alone inherited his property;

(ii) Jagarnath Kumhar died more than 20 years before the suit;

(iii) Jagarnaths interest in the property devolved upon the defendant by the rule of survivorship and the plaintiff and her daughters were entitled to maintenance only. The defendant was all along maintaining them;

(iv) Being misled by some designing persons, the plaintiff in 1948-49 had applied for mutation of her name in respect of the suit land. In that proceeding there was a compromise between the parties that the defendant would give 12 maunds of paddy annually for her maintenance and the land would stand mutated in the name of the defendant alone; and,

(v) Since then the plaintiff was receiving 12 maunds of paddy every year and never laid any claim to the suit land. Tn 1965, through the intervention of the grampanch the amount of paddy payable to the plaintiff was raised to 13 maunds per year and the plaintiff agreed that she would never make any claim to the land and the family house.

Substantially upon these averments, the defendant claimed that the plaintiff had not subsisting interest in the suit land, and so she was not entitled to sue for its partition.

4 The trial Court dismissed the suit holding that the parties are not governed by the Dayabhaga School of Hindu Law, and that the plaintiff is entitled to get only 13 maunds of paddy by way of maintenance and not entitled to get half share in the suit land as claimed.

5. But on appeal to the lower appellate Court, the suit has been decreed. The lower appellate Court has held that the ancestors of the parties were original residents of Bengal and that the parties are governed by the Dayabhaga School of Hindu Law. It has further held that the husband of the plaintiff died in January 1938 and as his heir the plaintiff came to hold his half share in the suit land, and although she had allowed the defendants name alone to be recorded in respect of the suit land in the mutation proceeding of 1948-49 and agreed to receive 12 maunds of paddy (later