Manava Dharmashastra 4.240

4.240

yathā jantuḥ prāṇyeka eva jāyate na suhṛdbāndhavādinā sa eka eva pralīyate | na suhṛdo bāndhavāḥ sahamaraṇamanubhavanti | yadi nāma bhāryā'nyo vā bhakto janastanmaraṇakāla ātmānaṃ hanyāttathāpi pṛthagevāsau maraṇakriyā | anayā na garbhaikyamatrivadanubhavanti | evaṃ sukṛtaduṣkṛte api pṛthagevānubhavanti | nanu ca 'na putradāram' ityuktam | yāvatā putraḥ śrāddhādikriyayā piturupakarotyeva mṛtasyaivaṃ bhāryā'pi | satyam | dhārmikasyaiva tādṛśaḥ putro bhavatīti tatparametat | yathā jīvataḥ kasyaciddhastagrāhikayā kaścitsahāyo bhavatyevaṃ mṛtasya putro dharmadvāreṇaivopakaroti |

Medhātithi’s commentary (manubhāṣya):
‘Each creature’—living being—‘is born alone,’—and not along with his friends and relations; and ‘alone does it cease to be;’ friends and relations do not die with him. Even when one’s wife, or some other devoted person, kills herself at the time of one’s death, this act of dying is different from that of the man’s own dying; and, by this act, the wife does not become born in the same womb with the husband, in the way in which Atri was born.

Similarly, his good and evil deeds also the man enjoys himself.

“It has been said that neither one’s wife nor one’s sons help him; hut, as a matter of fact, the son does help the father, by performing the śrāddha and other rites; and so the wife also.”

True; but all that this mentis is that such a dutiful son is horn only to a person who has acquired merit; and, just as during life, one is helped by another person who supports him by the hand, so also, when the man dies, his son helps him by means of religious acts.—(240)