Hindu Law and Custom (Recht und Sitte) c7.509

c7.509

These and other data, however, do not, of course, authorise us to conclude that there was a period of matriarchy in India, something like the state of things among the pre-Islamic Arabians⁴—the famous statement about the Gāndhāra Brahmans in the Rājatar., of whom it is said that they lived in incest, has now turned out to be an interpolation.⁵ The recognition of the anytrakaraṇa, gūḍhotpanna and other illegitimate sons should be attributed to the unusual importance attached to male descendants. Toleration of prostitution has not hindered the growth of a strict law of marriage. The sagas about an earlier period of immorality are utilised directly to represent the lax views about legitimate and illegitimate sons as obsolete. The unfavourable opinion about the conjugal faith of women of the eastern countries is perhaps based upon old accounts about Tibetan and Further Indian tribes among whom even now the married life is very lax.