The Position of Women in Hindu Civilisation, from Prehistoric Times to the Present Day c8.57

c8.57

The widow could not inherit the property of her husband after his death; it passed on to her sons. Yet decorum required that they should live under the protecting care of their mother after the death of the father. They could not think of partition during her lifetime (*Manu*, IX, 104). She was in fact their *de facto* guardian. Relations between the mother and her children were very tender; people felt old not when their hair had grown gray, but when their mother was no more¹. Mothers were never more unhappy than when away from their children. Kuntī was separated from her sons, when they were banished for thirteen years. In her message to Kṛishṇa at the end of that period she observes that neither widowhood nor poverty have caused her that much affliction as her separation from her dear sons².