History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v4.c63.t2.271.4

v4.c63.t2.271.4

What is material is not whether a female intervenes somewhere, but whether the person about whose sapiṇḍaship a question is raised traces his descent to a common ancestor through his father or through his mother. In the P. C. case the claimant claimed sapiṇḍaship with the deceased through his mother, and it was rightly decided that he being 6th from the common ancestor was not a bandhu. But to lay down as a universal rule that a bandhu in order to inherit under the Mit. should not be beyond five degrees from the common ancestor is against the definition of sapiṇḍa given by the Mit. itself and unduly narrows the express words of the Mit. The words of the P. C. 'the sapiṇḍa relationship, on which the heritable right of collaterals is founded, ceases in the case of the bhinna-gotra sapiṇḍa with the fifth degree from the common ancestor' (L. R. 41 I. A. 290 at p. 312) are very generally expressed and are susceptible of the interpretation that they lay down the rule of five degrees even when the claimant claims¹⁴⁵⁸ relationship with the deceased through his own father. Some support for the Privy Council rule that sapiṇḍa relationship ceases with the 5th degree from the common ancestor in the case of bhinnagotra sapiṇḍas may be found in the words of Mitramiśra in his commentary on Yāj. I. 52, in the implication of the words of Kullūka¹⁴⁵⁹ on Manu V. 60 and in the remarks of the Bālambhaṭṭī (p. 191).