Study Bava Batra folio 26B with parallel Hebrew-English text, traditional commentary, and modern study tools. Free access to Babylonian Talmud online.
until I told him that which Rav Yehuda says: With regard to a strip of land over which the public has an acquired privilege of use, one may not destroy it. Here too, since I have an acquired privilege of use of this land, you are not permitted to destroy that which I possess. After Rav Pappa left,
§ The Mishnah teaches that if he was digging a cistern, a ditch, or a cave, he may cut downward and the wood is his. The Sage Ya’akov of Hadeyyav raised a dilemma before Rav Ḥisda: To whom does the wood belong? The Mishnah says that the wood is his, without specifying to which of the two individua
Rav Ḥisda said to him: You learned the answer in a Mishnah in tractate Me’ila (13b). If roots of a tree belonging to an ordinary person [hedyot] extend into a field belonging to the Temple treasury, one may not derive benefit from them, but if one derived benefit from them he is not liable for misus
Granted, if you say that we follow the tree, and the roots are considered part of it, it is due to that reason that one is not liable for misuse, as the tree is not consecrated. But if you say we follow the land, i.e., the roots belong to the land’s owner, why is he not liable for misuse of conse
The Talmud asks: Rather, what will you say, that we follow the tree? If so, say the last clause of that Mishnah: If roots of a tree belonging to the Temple treasury extend into a field of an ordinary person, one may not derive benefit from them, but if one derived benefit from them he is not liable