Calcutta, Aug. 18 : It is not usual for a court of law to take the help of Taranatha Tarkavachaspati's Vachaspaatyam (A Comprehensive Sanskrit Dictionary) or Nagendra Nath Basu's Bangla Vishwakosh. But, then, it is also not usual for a court of law to be called upon to arbitrate in matters that, at least apparently, verge on the spiritual. Calcutta High Court, however, recently found itself being called upon to do exactly that: choosing between the sebayet and the tantradharak as the deity's representative, or 'next friend'. After going through the arguments and the counter-arguments of the legal representatives of both the sebayet and the tantradharak - and the voluminous texts in Devanagari script - Justice Pratap Kumar Ray decreed that the tantradharak had 'no locus standi to be the next friend of the deity'. He was, the court concluded, an employee under the sebayet, who was the controlling authority according to the will. So, the suit filed by the tantradharak was 'not maintainable'. Though the matter first came to Alipore court and then to the high court in the form of a sebayet-versus-tantradharak case, legal opinion says the matter concerns something 'less spiritual'. The legal battle is actually over the control of Lake Kalibari, now being rebuilt on a grand scale on Southern Avenue. Advocate Srikanta Bhattacharya filed the petition first in Alipore on behalf of temple tantradharak Ramkanai Chattopadhyay, claiming that the property was a 'public debottor' one. He alleged that one Netai Chandra Bose had established himself as the sebayet and was mismanaging the property, in collusion with others, 'by handling cash for personal gain, thereby causing injury to the frame of the deity in the mind of the devotees'. Alipore court, however, ruled in Bose's favour, prompting Chattopadhyay to appeal to the high court, where Bose's counsel Ajay Mitra contended that it was Chattopadhyay who, along with his brother Haradhan, was trying to 'grab the pranami, dakshina and ornaments offered to the deity'. The legal battle prompted Calcutta High Court to get to the root of the word tantradharak. 'The word tantra is a composition of two words (tan and tra, the former meaning vistar or expansion),' the court explained, adding that it was the tantradharak's duty to 'create the environment and make the correct sound waves by reciting the mantra'. His status was equivalent to that of pujari, archak and purohit, 'or a little bit higher', the court said, but never equal to that of the sebayet.