luding act of the transaction referred to,
_scil._ gift.]

[Footnote 66: _e.g._ if one, for a consideration, pledge a field to
another, and then pledge the same field to some one else, also for a
consideration--the first act is the valid one. (_M._)]

[Footnote 67: Sir Wm. Jones and other learned persons would seem to
have restricted the term here used (_pashyati_) to personal knowledge
by sight; but it comprehends every mode of personal and actual
observation or discovery.]

[Footnote 68: who has no legal connection with it. (_M._)]

[Footnote 69: The Commentator quotes Narada, _scil._ "The guilty one
who holds possession without title, for even many hundred years,
should be punished by the monarch as a thief"--and he endeavours to
reconcile with this the law of Yajnavalkya, by confining the latter to
the fruits or profits of the land withheld. But this construction
cannot be admitted. There is a curious document germane to the subject
of this sloka copied in the official notes of Sir Robert Chambers
(Chief Justice of the Calcutta Supreme Court) in July 1791. It is a
letter from Sir William Jones to the Governor of Bombay upon the Hindu
title by adverse possession or prescription. Sir William writes, that
the doctrine of the Mitakshara is; "An absolute property may be
acquired in land by continued and undisputed possession for twenty
years, in the presence of the owner, provided that the possessor came
in by a fair title, either by descent or purchase; if he had no fair
title, the intermediate profits only are irrecoverable, but the
property is not lost." And he concludes; "I only add for your further
satisfaction, that, if three descents have happened since the first
possession, without a fair title, property is lost, even though the
owner was absent; but if three descents have not been cast, an adverse
possession for a hundred years gives an absolute property in the land
to the possessor, unless the owner was under some legal disability."
These may have been the modifications of a later age: they are not to
be found in Manu or in Yajnavalkya. Manu ch. 8, sl. 147, &c.]

[Footnote 70: any thing delivered for safe-keeping, its quality and
quantity being made known. (_M._)]

[Footnote 71: explained infra, sloka 65.]

[Footnote 72: The word literally or usually means "takes away"; and
the Commentator explains--where a pledgee retains and refuses to give
back the pledge, relying upon his long possession. The &c. re