The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c17.151

v1.c17.151

We have also very little information regarding civil law. The use of an ordeal in this connexion is attested only by the case of Vatsa who proved his purity of descent, which was assailed, by walking unharmed through fire. Presumably, civil cases might be decided by the king with assessors; but this view rests only on the analogy of other peoples and on the later practice in India itself. We know for certain that a Brāhman had preference in his law cases; but whether because it was a moral duty of the witnesses to bear testimony in his favour, or for the judges to give judgment for him, cannot be decided from the passage of the Taittirīya Saṃhitā which records the preference. As regards the substance of the law we learn the outlines of the law of succession: a father might in his lifetime divide his property among his sons, in which case he seems to have had a free hand as to their shares: if he grew old and helpless, they themselves might divide it, while in the division among the sons on his death the older son received the larger share. Women were excluded from the inheritance. Similarly, a woman had no property of her own: if her husband died, she passed to his family with the inheritance like the Attic *epiklēros*. Her earnings, if any, were the property of husband or father. The Çūdra seems in law to have been also without capacity of owning property in his own right. As in the period of the Rigveda, there is no evidence of joint family ownership of any property, even in the case of land, though, as we have seen, land at this epoch was not considered a suitable form of gift. There is a clear reference on the other hand to the allotment of land by the Kshatriya, presumably in accordance with the customary law. There is no trace of the development of the law of contract: much work was doubtless done by slaves or by hereditary craftsmen who received customary remuneration from the villagers, not payment for each piece of work.