History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v4.c63.t2.271.2

v4.c63.t2.271.2

It is strange that the deceased's own descendants through a female or the deceased's father's descendants through a female such as the son's daughter's son, daughter's son's son, daughter's daughter's son, sister's son or sister's daughter's son, are not mentioned in any authoritative commentaries or digests as his *bandhus*. Further, the bandhus enumerated in the three verses do not go beyond the 4th degree from the common ancestor. But bandhu relationship extends up to five degrees at least. There is an ancient instance of the sister's daughter's son having succeeded to a Buddhist *bhikṣu* in Cambodia (in śake 586). This would be so only according to the principles of the Mit. Vide 'Indian Cultural Influence in Cambodia' p. 55 by Dr. Bijan Raj Chatterji (Cal. 1928). All the above (such as the son's daughter's son) have been recognized by the Indian Courts as ātmabandhus entitled to inherit. In *United Provinces v. Kanhaiya Lal* 16 Lucknow 551 it has been held that the father's father's daughter's son's son would be an ātmabandhu of the deceased. In an early case¹⁴⁵⁶ in British India two propositions were laid down, viz. (1) there must be mutuality of sapiṇḍa relation between the deceased and the claimant (i. e. each must be a sapiṇḍa of the other) and (2) that in order that a man may be an heritable bandhu of the deceased they must be related *directly* through themselves or through their mother or father.