Hindu Law and Custom (Recht und Sitte) c8.51

c8.51

We have a whole series of successive appeals in the case of disputes over a house or a field, namely, (1) decision of the boundary dispute by the neighbours; if they are not unanimous, (2) by means of documents; (3) by the elders or other representatives of the village or the city or it should be decided by (4) uninterrupted possession for ten years (Śaṅkhalikhita). Also differences over gardens, plantations, wells, temples, tanks, inns, palaces, conduits for rain water and other immovables are mentioned—all of which reveals a highly developed individual property.¹ The rules connected with the changes of a river-bed and the boundary between two neighbouring villages or fields along this river-bed remind us of the frequency of great floods in India: the gain or loss arising from it should be taken quietly as a disposition of God just as a man cannot resist a royal command; yet however if a piece of tilled ground is swept away by the floods and deposited somewhere else it should be left in the possession of the original proprietor till the harvest time (Bṛh. 19, 16—21).