History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v3.c44.87

v3.c44.87

A question arises whether, when a work of public utility is dedicated, the founder possesses any control over the thing dedicated and if so to what extent. The Vīramitrodaya (on Vyavahāra²¹¹⁴) furnishes an answer to this question. The following is the gist of its argument keeping as close to the original as possible. When a man throws an oblation into fire, his ownership over the oblation comes to an end; but the oblation belongs to nobody. No human being has accepted it. Yet the sacrificer can prevent any one who wants to desecrate the offering by bringing it into contact with something impure from doing so and can see to it that the offering is reduced to ashes in the fire undisturbed. Similarly when a tank or a garden is dedicated to the public, the ownership of the founder in the thing is gone, but there is no other individual owner and no new ownership arises in any single person; yet the founder can prevent a third person making himself owner of the thing dedicated to the public and it cannot be argued that the founder cannot interfere for protecting the thing and that there is no blame if he does not safeguard the assumption of ownership by a third person. The practice of respectable people viz. the exercise of the right of preservation in the case of both (i. e. in the case of what is offered into the fire and what is dedicated to the public) is based on this consideration. The śāstric injunction about *utsarga* does not merely contemplate the divesting of one's ownership and dedication to the public, but also that the thing dedicated be enjoyed by the public without interference or encroachment, just as in *homa* also one does not merely desire to throw an oblation into fire (and rest content with that) but one desires to see that the oblation is reduced to ashes and is not rendered impure. This shows that the founder of a temple or the builder of a tank or garden would always retain a power to preserve the thing dedicated.