Page:The English Works of Raja Rammohun Roy Vol 2.djvu/258

246 “For the insertion of the word ‘whole’ would be unmeaning (if the gift of even a small part were forbidden.)” The author of the Dayubhagu does not stop here; but he lays down the following rule in the succeeding section already quoted, (26.) “But if the family cannot be supported without selling the whole immoveable and other property, even the whole may be sold or otherwise disposed of: as appears from the obvious sense of the passage, and because it is directed, that ‘a man should by all means preserve himself.’” Here Jeemootvahun justifies, in the plainest terms, the sale and other disposal by a father of the whole of the estate inherited from his own father for the maintenance of his family or for self-preservation, without committing even a moral offence: but I regret that this simple position by Jeemootvahun should not have been adverted to by the writer of the article while reviewing the subject.

37, To his declaration, that “Nothing can be more clear than Jeemootvahun’s assertion of this doctrine,” the reviewer adds the followiogfollowing [sic] phrase: “And the doubt cast upon it by its expounders, Rughoonundun, Shree Krishnu Turkalunkar, and Jugunnath, is wholly gratuitous. In fact, the latter is chiefly to blame for the distiction between illegal and invalid acts.” It is, I think, requisite that I should notice here who these three expounders were, whom the writer charges with the invention of this doctrine; at what periods they lived; and how they stood and still stand in the estimation of the people of Bengal. To satisfy any one on these points, I have only to refer to the accounts given of them by Mr. Colebrooke, in his preface to the translation of the Dayubhagu. In speaking of Rughoonundun, he says, “It bears the name of Rughoo-