War in Ancient India c5.s1.45

c5.s1.45

The son was begotten on one’s wife by appointment. The practice was for the reigning king to appoint a person, preferably a sage, to have sexual intercourse with his wife and bring forth a son to succeed him. In such cases the sage imposed certain conditions, and in practice the queen often discountenanced such a union. But still she yielded lest the line should be completely extinguished. Legend says that Bali, the Vairocana, had no children, and appointed the sage Dīrghatamas, by whom his queen gave birth to five sons—Anga, Vanga, Kaliṅga, Pauṇḍra and Simha. The story goes that at first she refused and sent in her place her slave girl to whom was born Kakṣīvān.³⁸ In the Mahābhārata again Dhṛtarāṣṭra being blind was debarred from sitting on the throne. So his brother Pāṇḍu succeeded him and Pāṇḍu became in course of time sickly, and therefore recourse was had to *niyoga* to beget sons on Pāṇḍu's queen. Though the practice of *niyoga* had neither the willing approval of the lawgivers nor of the parties to it, all the same it was resorted to. And Manu assigns a low status to a *niyoga* son, nicknamed a *kṣetraja*.³⁹