ARTHUR HOBHOUSE, J. - (1.) THIS appeal is presented in a suit (No. 1 of 1877) instituted by the Valiya Rajah of Palghaut in the Subordinate Court of South Malabar. The Plaintiff in that suit died after obtaining his decree; his immediate successor has also died, and the existing Rajah has been substituted as Respondent by order of the High Court of Madras. He has not thought fit to appear, and the case has been argued by the Appellants alone.
(2.) IT appears that in the families of the Malabar Rajahs it is customary to have a number of palaces, to each of which there is attached an establishment with lands for maintaining it, called by the name of a stanom. The Palghaut family have no less than nine stanoms. Each stanom has a Rajah as its head or stanomdar. The stanomdar represents the corpus of his stanom much in the same way as a Hindu widow represents the estates which have devolved upon her, and he may alienate the property for the benefit or proper expenses of the stanom. The Valiya Rajah appears to be the first in rank of the nine stanomdars, and to be the head of the Palghaut family. The Appellants, who represent the Defendants in the suit, are a branch of the Iyan family, and claim certain interests in land granted to members of that family by former Rajahs of Palghaut at intervals of time ranging from the year 1832 to the year 1851.
(3.) INASMUCH as between the year 1832 and the present time there have been eight successive Rajahs, all apparently bearing the same name, it will be convenient to distinguish them by numbers, beginning with Rajah I. in 1832. It will also be convenient to state the previous dealings between the Appellants or their predecessors in title on the one hand and the Rajahs on the other, before coming to the present suit, which is hardly intelligible without a knowledge of antecedent events.;