Correspondence on the subject of the education of the Muhammadan community in British India and their employment in the public service generally (Calcutta: Government Printing India, 1886)

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16. Every English Judge in this country has no doubt in his library a copy of the “Heda
va," and also Sir William Hay Macnaghten's “ Principles and Precedents of Muhammadan
Law"” published at Calcutta in 1825, and of which a second edition was published at Madras
in 1860.
Sir William Macnaghten's very able work is constantly referred to, and is treated as oi
the highest authority, not only by courts in India, but by the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council, and as all but decisive on any point of Muhammadan law contained in it.
With that work, with the “ Hedaya,” and Mr. Neil Baillie's excellent treatises and other
English works and with the reported decisions of the various High Courts and of the Judicial
Committee of the Privy Council, a European Judge in India has, as a rule, little or no difficulty
in deciding any question of Muhammadan law that may come before him for decision.
17. The Lords of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, whose carefully prepared
judgments command universal respect throughout British India, and before whom Muhammadan
cases, principally from Bengal, the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, are brought every
year, never appear to experience any difficulty in deciding points of Muhammadan law, although
they are without “a Muhammadan Judge to assist them in administering properly the Mussul-
man law."
L. H. BAYLEY,—24-4-82.

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