JUDGMENT : KNOX, J. The one question we have to consider in this appeal is whether a debt at one time due from the father of a Hindu joint family living jointly, but time-barred, can rank as an antecedent debt, and whether, if the father executes a mortgage in consideration of the said debt when time-barred, such mortgage will be binding upon the sons? 2. The District Judge held that an antecedent debt must be an existing antecedent debt, an antecedent debt paid up or time-barred cannot be said to be such debt. 3. He further held that if a Hindu father living as a member of a joint Hindu family purported to remove such debt by his acknowledgment on the date of the mortgage, the mortgage would not be binding on the sons. 4. We have not been referred to any text of Hindu Law or any precedent bearing upon the point. We have searched and have not been able to find any. There is no doubt that the Hindu Law did not recognise the principle of limitation with reference to debts, at the same time the fact remains that if the creditor had tried to sue for the debt at the time that the mortgage was entered into, or if the father had executed a mortgage on the basis of an acknowledgment of such time-barred debt, the debt could not have been recovered, or the mortgage lien enforced, in our courts. 5. The result is that we see no reason to differ from the view taken by the learned District Judge. The appeal fails and is dismissed with costs.