WYAVASTHA?.DARPANA. i 138 619. Persons afflicted with the abovementioned maladies, other than those blind, Vyavuths. deaf, lame, or mad from birth, are excluded only in the case of their maladies being incurable:
This being consistent with justice and reason, and they being included among the persons incurably diseased. ‘Consistent with reason and justice'—because it would be inconsistent with law and practice, if a person, afflicted with such a disease before his father's death, but cured after it, be disinherited although immediately after the cure of that disease or defect he be entittled to the performance of the duties of a son, and fully enabled to perform the same, inasmuch as, when he is restored to the right of offering the oblation of food and libation of water and performing the solemn rites, a fortiori is he entitled to inherit both according to law and practice. Raghunandana also holds, that expiation for a man afflicted with elephantiasis, or other similar disease, is ordained for the purpose of enabling him to perform acts of religion ordained in the Peda. By parity of reasoning he becomes competent to inherit property, as well as to perform religious ceremonies. It is not found in any other case that a son competent to perform obsequies and other acts of religion is not qualified to inherit.—Coleb. Dig. vol. III, p. 305. Jimusarāhana also is of the same opinion. He says: “Since a son delivers his father from the hell called ‘put, therefore he is named ‘pustra’ by the Self-existent himself.-By this and similar passages great benefits are stated as effected by means of a son. His connection with the property is therefore the reward of his beneficial acts." (Coleh. I)A bhā. p. 102.) It follows that he who performs the acts deserving reward is certainly entitled to the reward. “Afflicted with an incurable disease'—this being heard (said, ) if aster partition (by the other parcenera) the diseased be cured by medicine and so forth, then he also must share the heritage.–Commentary on the Dáyabhága, Sans. p. 119. (b) “An incurable disease;’—a hopeless leprosy or the like. —Coleb. Dig. Vol. III, p. 321. By the term ' or the like ' is meant the other incurable diseases occasioned by crimes, they being equally (with leprosy ) the causes of disherison. Most of the diseases occasioned by crimes have been enumerated by Mann, thus:—“Some evil-minded persons, for sins committed in this life, and some for had actions in a preceding state, suffer a morbid change in their bodies.—A stealer of gold (from a Brahmen ) has whitlows on his nails; a drinker of spirits, black teeth; the slayer of a Brahmen, a marasmus; the violator of his Guru's bed, a deformity in the generative organs; a malignant informer fetid ulcers in his nostrils; a false detractor, stinking breath ; a stealer of grain, the defect of some limb; a mixer 9f bad wares with good, some redundant member. A i of Authority.
