ဘုရားတန်ဆောင်းများရှိကဗ္ဗည်းများကိုသက်သေခံအဖြစ်တင်ပြခြင်းကိစ္စ။ [ Part Two ]

 ဆရာကြီးဦးမြသင်ကြားပို့ချချက်များ

ဘုရားတန်ဆောင်းများရှိကဗ္ဗည်းများကိုသက်သေခံအဖြစ်တင်ပြခြင်းကိစ္စ။

[ Part Two ]

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VOL. I. INDIAN LAW REPORTS. RANGOON SERIES. 102 ( 121 )

APPELLATE CIVIL

Befere Sir Sydney Robinson , Kt., Chief Justice , and Mr. Justice May Oung.

MAUNG PO KAN

             v.

DAW AT AND OTHERS.

Civil First Appeal No. 9 of 1922 from a judgment and decree of the District Court of Hanthawaddy  dismissing  the plaintiff’s suit.

1923 Mar. 7

အမှုတွင်အယူခံတရားလိုမောင်ဖိုးကံကမြန်မာဗုဒ္ဓဘာသာမငွေနှင့်မောင်ဝက်ကြီး၏ကိတ္တိမသားအဖြစ်အရေးဆိုရာအမှုရှုံးသဖြင့်ဟိုက်ကုတ်လွှတ်တော်တွင်တင်သွင်းသောအယူခံမှုဖြစ်သည်။

စီရင်ထုံးပါအကြောင်းပြချက်တို့မှာစာမျက်နှာ-၁၀၃ မှ ၁၂၀ အထိရှည်လျားသည်။

မျက်မှောက်ခေတ်စီရင်ထုံးများမှာကဲ့သို့၊အဆို၊အချေ၊နှစ်ဘက်လျှောက်လဲချက်များကစာမျက်နှာများတွင်နေရာမယူ။

ထိုစဉ်ကစနစ်အရမည်သူကစီရင်ချက်ရေးကြောင်းမသိရ။

——————————

VOL. I. INDIAN LAW REPORTS. RANGOON SERIES. 451 ( 460 )

PRIVY COUNCIL.

Present : VISCOUNT HALDANE, LORD BUCKMASTER, LORD PARMOOR.

MA THAN THAN

             v.

MA PWA THIT.

( On appeal from the late Chief Court of Lower Burma. )

P.C. 1923 July

စီရင်ထုံးမှာလည်းကိတ္ထိမမွေးစားခြင်းပြဿနာကိုအဆုံးအဖြတ်ပေးသောစီရင်ထုံးဖြစ်သည်။

စာမျက်နှာ-၄၅၂ မှစ၍ ၄၆၄ တွင်ဆုံးသည်။

စီရင်ချက်သည်ချွတ်ယွင်းချက်မရှိသည်ကိုတွေ့မြင်နိုင်သည်။

မူလမှုကိုအောက်မြန်မာပြည်တရားရုံးချုပ်တရားသူကြီး Mr. ROBINSON ကစီရင်ရာ၌၊တရားလိုကိုအနိုင်ပေးသည်။

သို့သော်အောက်မြန်မာပြည်တရားရုံးချုပ်ခုံရုံးက Mr. ROBINSON ၏အဆုံးအဖြတ်ကိုပယ်ဖျက်သဖြင့်၊ပရီဗီကောင်စီတွင်တင်သွင်းသောအယူခံဖြစ်သည်။

ပရီဗီကောင်စီကအယူခံခုံရုံး၏အဆုံးအဖြတ်ကိုပယ်ဖျက်ပြီး Mr. ROBINSON ၏အဆုံးအဖြတ်ကိုအတည်ပြုသည်။

Mr. ROBINSON ၏ဥပဒေပညာကိုအကဲခတ်နိုင်ရန်ဖော်ပြခြင်းဖြစ်သည်။

ပရီဗီကောင်စီကစီရင်ထုံးစာမျက်နှာ-၄၅၃၌အောက်ပါအတိုင်းသုံးသပ်သည်-

[ Mr. Justice Robinson decreed the plaintift-appel-lant's suit; but on appeal by the defendant, the late Chief Court in its Appellate Jurisdiction (Twomey C.J., and Young, J.) reversed the decree of the Trial Court and dismissed the suit with costs. It was from this judgment and decree that the plaintiff appealed to their Lordships of the Privy Council with the result reported below. ]

ပရီဗီကောင်စီအဖွဲ့ဝင်တရားသူကြီး LORD PARMOOR. ကစီရင်ထုံးစာမျက်နှာ-၄၅၄၌အောက်ပါအတိုင်းသုံးသပ်သည်-

[ In the first Court the Judge, Mr. Justice Robinson, gave judgment in favour of the appellant, but this judgment was set aside in the Court of Appeal.

At the trial of the action, there was a considerable conflict of evidence between the witnesses, called respectively on behalf of the appellant and respondent.

Mr. Justice Robinson held that implicit trust might-be placed in the evidence of Maung So Naing, who had joined Ko Po Kyaw in business many years ago, and was the trusted manager of the business. 

He lived in Ko Po Kyaw's house, and was treated like a brother. 

There is no doubt of the importance of the evidence Maung So Naing, but in the Court of Appeal his evidence was treated as unreliable, and the Chief Justice regrets that he cannot agree with the learned Judge's opinion of this man's impartiality. ]

စီရင်ထုံးစာမျက်နှာ-၄၅၆၊၄၅၇၊၄၅၈တို့တွင်အောက်ပါအတိုင်းမြွက်ဆိုသည်-

[ The facts stated above point directly to the conclusion that Ko Po Kyaw did adopt the appellant as his keittima daughter. 

There is no special ceremony in Burmese adoption, but the adoption must be a matter of publicity and notoriety. It is strong ovi-dence of such publicity and notoriety, that the appellant lived continuously in the house oi Ko Po Kyaw from her babyhood for twelve or thirteen years and that he was entered on the register of the school, as her parent, and paid the school fees. 

Moreover, there is evidence that the appellant was given jewellery by Ko Po Kyaw to wear, and that Ko Po Kyaw also paid for her clothes. 

It is however, suggested that this evidence is consistent with Ko Po Kyaw taking over the charge of the daughter of his relative, Ma Gyoke, and bringing her up in his house, as an assistance to his relative, but without the intention of adopting her as his keittima daughter. 

It is in reference to this suggestion that it becomes necessary to consider shortly the more important evidence adduced at the hearing. 

Undoubtedly, the most important witness is, Maung So Naing. 

Mr. Justice Robinson who saw Maung So Naing and heard his evidence, held that he was a credible witness, that is to say, a witness whose evidence could be, trusted and who intended, within the best of his recollection, to tell the truth.

It may well be that although a witness is credible, yet that his recollection of a particular incident is not of such a character as to carry much weight, but in this instance, if Maung So Naing is to be accepted as a credible witness, it is hardly possible to reject the evidence which he gives as to the adoption of the appellant. 

He states that he was present at the tune of adoption, together with the members of the household of Ko Po Kyaw, and that a kinmoodot ceremoney was perfromed, and that the pôngyis were invited and led. 

If this evidence has been invented for the purpose of the case, Maung So Naing could not be regarded as in any sense a credibie witness: and the Court of Appeal in rejecting it have directiy differed from Mr. Justice Robinson on the question of credibility. 

In the Court of Appeal certain inconsistencies in the evidence of Maung So Naing were referred to in support of the view that he was not a credibie witness, and he was further criticised for his conduct in withholding the key of the safe after the death of Ko Po Kyaw, but it appears to their Lordships that, in this respect, he acted rightiy, and in accord with the responsibilities which he came under at the death of Ko Po Kyaw. 

Where the Judge, who has seen a witness, and has heard his evidence, come to the conclusion that the witness is credible, that is to say, a witness who to the best of his recollection intends to tell the trutl, it requires circumstaaces of exceptional character to justify a Court of Appeal in coming to a different conclusion.

It is not a question of the weight of evidçnce, but of the attitude and trustworthiness of the witness, and of the effect of his whole demeanour in Lhe witness box. 

In the opinion of their Lordships there are no such exceptional circumstances in the present case, and accepting Maung So Naing as a credible witness, it is clear that the appellant lived in the house Ko Po Kyaw as his adopted daugther, and was publicly recongised by him as his adopted daughter. 

Evidence was given on behalf of the respondent by three near relatives of Ma Nyun and by U Maung Gyi, a Pagoda Trustee, and rice miller, who state that they knew nothing of the adoption of the appellant by Ko Po Kyaw, but if the evidence of Maung So Naing is believed this negative evidence has little value. ]

စီရင်ထုံးစာမျက်နှာ-၄၅၉၌အောက်ပါအတိုင်းသုံးသပ်၍နိဂုံးချုပ်သည်-

[ What is the effect of this award and release? 

Mr. Justice Robinson held that the arbitrators acted chilusively with the respondent, and that, by reason of such collusion, the award was invalid. 

It was not thought necessary to give any decision on this point in the Court of Appeal, but, in the opinion of their Lord-ships, the evidence is amply sufficient to maintain the finding of Mr. Justice Robinson. 

The result is that the award must be rogarded as invalid. 

The finding in the award, that the appellant was the heittima daughter of Ko Po Kyaw, is not a finding on which the appellant can rely, and the payment of Rs. 30,000 under the times of the award cannot be regarded as a valid release of the claims of the appellant against the estate of Ko Po Kyaw. 

This sum is part of the terms of an award based on the collusive action of the arbitrators, and such an award is necessarily wholly invalid owing to their misconduct. 

Their Lordships are unable to attach importance to the subsequent inconsistent evidence given by the lugyis at the trial, and agree with Mr. Justice Robinson that the release fails by reason of the decision that the award itself is vitiated by the collusive misconduct of the arbitrators.

In the result their Lordships will humbly advise His Majesty that the judgment of the Court of Appeal should be set aside with costs, and the judgment of Mr. Justice Robinson réstored. ]

————————

မောင်ဖိုးကံတရားစွဲဆိုစဉ်ကကိတ္တိမသားသမီးများမွေးစားရာ၌မှတ်ပုံတင်မွေးစားစာချုပ်ချုပ်ဆိုရမည်ဆိုသောဥပဒေပြဌာန်းချက်မရှိသေး။

ရှုပ်ထွေးလှသောနှုတ်နှင့်စာသက်သေခံများအရဆုံးဖြတ်ရသည်ဖြစ်၍အထိုက်အလျောက်ခက်ခဲသောအမှုမျိုးဖြစ်သည်။

ကိတ္တိမသားသမီးအဖြစ်မွေးစားခြင်းဟုတ်မဟုတ်ဆန်းစစ်ရသောအကြောင်းအရာများတွင်၊ထိုသို့မွေးစားကြောင်းကျော်ဇောသတင်းရှိမရှိမှာရှေ့တန်းတွင်နေရာယူသည်။

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1963 BLR ( C C ) 184 ( 200 )

ORIGINAL CIVIL

Before U Maung Maung, J.

MA KYAING (PLAINTIFF)

             V.

MA OHN KYI AND FOUR OTHERS (DEFENDANTS).

Civil Regular Suit No. 80 of 1957, of the Original Side.

C.C. 1963 April 30.

အမှုကိုပြည်ထောင်စုမြန်မာနိုင်ငံဥပဒေအတွဲ ၁၁၊ စာမျက်နှာ ၁ တွင်ဖော်ပြထားသော[ The Registration of Kittima Adoption Act ]အရဆုံးဖြတ်သည့်၊တရားရုံးချုပ်[ ၁၉၆၂-၇၃ ]တရားသူကြီးဒေါက်တာမောင်မောင်က-

[ The customary law relating to kittima adoption has now been crystalized in the Act ][ ကိတ္တိမသားသမီးမွေးစားခြင်းနှင့်သက်ဆိုင်သောဓလေ့ထုံးတမ်းဥပဒေကိုယခုအခါအက်ဥပဒေတွင်ပြဌာန်းပြီးဖြစ်သည် ]ဟူ၍လည်းကောင်း-

[ The Registration of Kittima Adoption Act embodies all the elements that were required by the customary law ][ ကိတ္တိမသားသမီးမွေးစားခြင်းအက်ဥပဒေသည်ဓလေ့ထုံးတမ်းဥပဒေအရလိုအပ်ချက်အရပ်ရပ်ကိုထင်ဟပ်သည် ]ဟူ၍လည်းကောင်း-

လှလှပပသီကုံးထားသည်ကိုတွေ့မြင်နိုင်ပါသည်။

ကမ္ဘာတည်သ၍တည်နေမည်ဖြစ်သောစီရင်ထုံးများသည်ဒေါက်တာမောင်မောင်၏မြွက်ဆိုချက်များကဲ့သို့ခန့်ငြားထည်ဝါသောအသုံးအနှုန်းများပါရန်လိုအပ်သည်။

[ မြန်မာစာအဖွဲ့ကပြုစုသောအင်္ဂလိပ်-မြန်မာအဘိဓာန်စာမျက်နှာ-၃၂၇ တွင်[ crystallize ] ကို [ ပုံပေါ်လာသည်၊ဆောင်စေသည် ]ဟူ၍လည်းကောင်း၊စာမျက်နှာ-၄၄၀တွင်[ embody ][ ပုံဖော်သည်၊သရုပ်ထင်စေသည် ]ဟူ၍လည်းကောင်း၊စာမျက်နှာ-၄၃၇တွင်[ element ] ကို [ လိုအပ်ချက် ]ဟူ၍လည်းကောင်းအဓိပ္ပာယ်ဖွင့်ဆိုထားသည်။ ]

မွေးစားစာချုပ်ချုပ်ဆိုခြင်း၊မှတ်ပုံတင်ခြင်းတို့သည်မွေးစားကြောင်းကျော်ဇောသတင်း၏ပြယုဂ်များဖြစ်သည်ဟုပြဆိုသည်။

မြန်မာဓလေ့ထုံးတမ်းဥပဒေအရလိုအပ်ချက်ဖြစ်သောကျော်ဇောသတင်းကိုသက်သေထူရာ၌၊တာဝန်အကြီးအကျယ်ပေါ့သွားသည်ကိုတွေ့မြင်နိုင်သည်။

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VOL. I. INDIAN LAW REPORTS. RANGOON SERIES. 102 ( 121 )

APPELLATE CIVIL

Befere Sir Sydney Robinson , Kt., Chief Justice , and Mr. Justice May Oung.

MAUNG PO KAN

             v.

DAW AT AND OTHERS.

Civil First Appeal No. 9 of 1922 from a judgment and decree of the District Court of Hanthawaddy  dismissing  the plaintiff’s suit.

1923 Mar. 7

စီရင်ထုံးစာမျက်နှာ-၁၁၄ မှ ၁၁၆ တွင်၊ကိတ္တိမသားအဖြစ်မွေးစားကြောင်းသက်သေခံတို့ကိုအောက်ပါအတိုင်းဖော်ပြသည်မှာပညာသားပါသောအရေးအသားဖြစ်သည်-

[  Great reliance is, however, placed on what might, in some circumstances, amount to a public declaration as to the high status enjoyed by an adopted son, namely the inclusion of the plaintiff's name as the son of Ma Ngwe in lithic inscriptions recording the public acts of charity performed by her and her relatives. 

One of these is alleged to have been carved on the base of a marble image, dedicated by Ma Ngwe and installed in a Tazaung erected at her expense for public adoration. 

The defence is that there never was any such inscription, and that the evidence concerning it is a pure fabrication.

Maung Sein (fourteenth P.W.), a Revenue Surveyor, deposes that some time in November or December 1920 (while the suit was pending)_he, accompanied by Maung Po Mya, visited the Tazaung, saw the inscriptior, and wrote out a copy of it, filed as Exhibit "C. " 

This reads as follows :- " 1274 B.E. Deed of merit of (            ), dayaka, and Ma Ngwe,dayakama, donors of the Sataungpyi image, daughter of U Shwe Min and Daw At, donors of the Lwan Zedi Pagoda and grand-daughter of U Waing, Daw Khwe, U Hmon and Daw Pye of Dabein and her (Ma Ngwe's) sons, Maung Khwe and Mung Po Kan, for the attainment of Nirvana.

May nats and men call “Thadu (very well)”

Maung Khwe was the natural-born son of Ma Ngwe and Maung Po Kan is the plaintiff.

If it be proved that this legend was inscribed under instructions trom Ma Ngwe, and that she authorized the inclusion of the plaintiff's name as one of her sons, we should have no hesitation in accepting this cogent evidence of Ma Ngwe's intention as regards the plaintiff's status. 

When the donor of an image, or a religious or other charitable building, sets up a public record of a gift and in it mentions the names of his or her relatives, both dead and living, it can safely be assumed that the relationship between the donor and those whese names are thus included is definitely admitted and proclaimed. 

And where, as in this case, one of them is an adopted son, but is referred to simply as a son, it must be taken that a Kittima adoption was intended.

That there was such an inscription we have no doubt. 

Maung Sein is supported by Maung Po Mya, the village headman. 

There are, it is true, discrepancies between his evidence and that of Maung Sein as to exactly how they happened to go tugether to the tazaung on the occasion when the copy was made, but we accept their testimony as to the facts that they saw the inscription and that one of them made a copy of it. 

It is extremely improbable that public servants of their position would have deliberately fabricated this story of a non-existent inscription in a place to which access is available and casy.

Moreover, Saya Pe (fifteenth P.W.), a physician, fifty-five years old, and a disinterested witness, said that he had seen an inscription on the base of the marble image a little more than a year before he gave evidence; that would be about January or February 1920 ; and Maung Saw Maung, who bought the image for Ma Ngwe, saw an inscription after its installation. 

The second defendant denies that he ever saw any inscription on the base of the image; he admits that the Tazaung used to be kept open, but states that since December 1920 (it is noteworthy that this is in all probability later than the date on which Surveyor Maung Sein made his copy, when lacquer gum was painted on the base and on the pedestal with a view to gilding them with gold-leaf, the tazaung has been kept closed. 

When photographer Maung Sein (eleventh P.W.) went on the 20th December 1920 to take a photograph of the image, he found the base of the image and the pedestal besmeared with lacquer gum and hence the print (Exhibit " E ") shows no traces of any inscription. 

Accepting, as we do. the evidence that an inscription like Exhibit "C" did exist till about the month of November 1920 we are led to the conclusion that someone, having learnt of the copy taken by Maung Sein and Maung Po Mya, and with a view to defeating the plaintiff's case on this point, intentionally covered up the writing carved on the base of the image. 

For this reprehensible conduct the defendants must be held responsible, though it is impossible to determine who it was that actually instigated, or carried out, the idea. ]

စီရင်ထုံးစာမျက်နှာ-၁၁၅တွင်ဖော်ပြထားသော[ disinterested witness ]ဟူသောသက်သေသည်မည်ကဲ့သို့သောသက်သေဖြစ်သလဲ ?

ထိုသက်သေသည်မြန်မာဆေးဆရာဖြစ်သည်။

အသက် ၅၅ နှစ်အရွယ်ဖြသ်သည်ဟုအကြောင်းပြည့်ပြည့်စုံစုံဖော်ပြသည့်အကြောင်းရင်းကိုသိဖို့လိုပါသည်။

သက်သေကိုယုံသင့်၊မယုံသင့်ဆင်ခြင်ရာ၌အလေးထားဆင်ခြင်ရသောအချက်အလက်များဖြစ်သည်ကို၊ဥပဒေပညာရှင်များသတိချပ်အပ်သည်။

အချင်းဖြစ်စဉ်ကမြန်မာဆေးဆရာတို့သည်မြန်မာတို့လေးစားရသောဂုဏ်သရေရှိပုဂ္ဂိုလ်ဖြစ်၍လည်းကောင်း၊အသက်အရွယ်ကြီးရင့်သောမြန်မာတို့သည်မုသားပြောခဲခြင်းကြောင့်လည်းကောင်း၊ယုံကြည်ထိုက်သူသက်သေဖြစ်သည်ကိုသွယ်ဝိုက်ဖော်ပြခြင်းဖြစ်သည်။

Hostile witness, partisan witness, interested witness, disinterested witness, independent witness စသည့်သက်သေအမျိုးမျိုးကိုယုံကြည်မှုတို့သည်ကွဲပြားသည်။

အမှု၏အနိုင်အရှုံးကိုစိတ်မဝင်စားသောမည်သည့်အမှုသည်၏အကျိုးကိုမျှမလိုလားသောသက်သေသည်ယုံကြည်ထိုက်သောသူဖြစ်သည်။

စီရင်ထုံးပါစာအရေးအသားတို့ကိုအတုခိုးအပ်သည်။

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