VYA WASTH A. DARI'AN A. 88.4 and as such is destitute of discretion.-Consequently, it is inconsistent with the reason of the law that an infant, op to that, a r should a lopt a son (thon rh adoption be a positive act of religion.) From the tenth to the fifteenth year of age an infant is termed an adolescent : at this ago, his faculties develop, and he commences to have discretion. Besides, nature enabling a hoy in this country to beret a child before the sixteenth year of his age (when, generally speaking, he attains also dis retion, it is reasonable to infer that the boy, who is enabled by the law of nature to procreate a child, is also enabled by the reason of human law to have a child by adoption, provided he he not wanting in discretion. I'ri/, /d/; says: “ A decision inust not be made solely by having recours, to the letter of the written codes : since, if no devision were made according to the reason of the law, there might be a failure of justice.” Now it is unwarranted by the reason of the law to hold that a boy without discretion may alopt a son, because the law does not expressly prohibit him from ing so ; but that b y only is capable of adopting who has attained judgment. So the tern" infant, ” used in the opinion of Pundif Bhurut Chunder Shiromoni, must not be taken to mean any infant indiscriminately, but that infant alone who has attained discretion,-- that is, one who and rst-in-ls what benefit and religious merit are to be gained by adopting a son, and what he is to lose hy omitting to do so. " It is also inconsistent with the reason of the law to hold that a youth attains his retion and becomes capable of adopting at the six feenth year of his ago, and never before that, inasmtroh as it is absurd to suppors, th it, a boy on the last day of his fifteenth wear remains indiscreet, hut on the first l y of his sixteenth year he on a Hudden becomes endue with disoretion and a perfectly sensible man. However, as persons are expressly prohibited by the Shivra from doing any civil wet before the sixteenth year of their age, let persons under that age (though endued with discretion) not do the civil part of the act, but nothing prohibits their performing the religious part of it, which on the contrary is strictly enjoined to be performed by persons destitute of sons,—the same being a positive act of religion. It appears therefore certain that a boy, when he attains discretion, even before the sixteenth year, may adopt a son, provided it be necessary for him to adopt ; but he cannot make him successor to his estate by breaking the natural order of succession, since he can adopt a child to present the oblations of fool and lib utions of water, that being a more at of religion ; but to make a person successor to his estate is a civil act, which he is prohibited from doing before the sixteenth year of hi. age. Consequently, even if a child he adopted by an infant endned with discretion, that son cannot be entitled to solo ced to his estate; in smuch as the heritable right of such son is derivable from the art of his a lotive father, who being an insant had no power to do the civil art, that is, to dispose of his property, and whose disposition thereof is null and void.—As, however, it has been laid down in the Jattaka-chandrikā that the adopted sons of eunuchs and the like do not inherit the estates of their adoptive grandfathers, but are entitled to inaintenance only" by reason of their adoptive fathers, through whom they claim, having nu, title to their patrimony, by parity of reasoning, the adopted sons of infants should be entitled to maintenance only, since it is the general maxin of the law that –“ the sense of the law ascertained in one
- As sons, blind, lame, and so forth, do not inherit, -and since it is ordained, that their legitimate son, and son of the wife only, participate in the estate of the grandfather; a 501, given, or other deнсription of son, adopted by such persons, has no right to the estate of the paternal grandfather ; but to
maintenance only.–D. Ch. Seet. VI, § 1. 4:3
