व्यवहारमयूख (नीलकण्ठ भट्ट - पश्चिमी भारत की हिन्दू न्याय-संहिता एवं व्यवहार कोष)

xiv, VYAVAHARAMAYUKHA
courts as early as 1818 A. D.¹
As the Vyavahāramayūkha is said to be of paramount authority in
northern Konkan and as it considerably differs from the Mitākṣarā in matters
of inheritance and succession it is of great practical importance to settle with
precision the exact limits in northern Konkan up to which the Mayūkha
must be regarded as supreme. It has been decided that Karanja, an island
opposite the Bombay harbour is governed by the principles of the Mayūkha²
that Mahad the southernmost Taluka of the Kolaba District is not under the
paramount influence of the Mayūkha and that the predominance of the Ma-
yūkha cannot either on principle or authority be taken further south than
Chaul and Nagothna (in the northern part of the Kolaba District³)
Though the authority of the Vyavahāramayūkha is supreme in Gujarat
in the island of Bombay and in northern Konkan and high in the Maratha
country it is not to be supposed that the whole of it has either been accepted
by the people or adopted by the courts. There are several matters such as
the twelve kinds of sons the fifteen kinds of slaves and the marriage of a
person with girls belonging to lower castes than his own on which Nīlakaṇṭha
dwells with as much learning and seriousness as any ancient writer although
those usages had become obsolete centuries before his day. Nīlakaṇṭha says
that the paternal great-grand father the paternal uncle and the half brother's
son succeed together as heirs. But the courts have never recognised this rule
nor has that view ever been made the foundation of a claim in a court of law.⁴
Nīlakaṇṭha, following his father Śaṅkarabhaṭṭa says that a daughter's son
or a sister's son can be adopted even by a person belonging to the three
twice-born classes. But the Bombay High Court owing probably to mis-
apprehension as to the correct meaning of a highly abstruse passage of the
Mayūkha (pp. 112-118 of the present translation and notes thereon) holds
that the Vyavahāramayūkha is opposed to the adoption by the regenerate
classes of the daughter's son and sister's son.⁵

1. Vide Bhagwansingh v Bhagwan 17 All. 291 at p 314
2. Vide Sakharam v Sitabai 3 Bom. 353
3. Vide Varkur v Dhou 40 Bom 621 (where the authorities are collected).
4. Vide Rakh v Govind 1 Bom 97 at p 112 and also Bai v Manikrachai 21 B...
   at pp 420 and 447
5. Vide Gopal v Hanmant 3 Bom. 273 at p 280, and Vyas Chimanlal v Ramchandra 24 Bom. 453 at p. 480.