Hindu Law and Custom (Recht und Sitte) c7.664

c7.664

The commentators too frequently emphasise the difference between a legitimate wife and mere concubines and define the former as a wife who is married according to one of the approved forms of marriage and takes part in the religious duties of her husband and therefore under certain circumstances can also inherit his property. Thus here too the monogamic tendency is clearly perceptible which also characterises the treatment of matrimonial relations in the Smṛtis. As in the law of inheritance the claim only of that widow is recognised who was legally married and is called the surviving part of her husband (Bṛh. 25, 47) so also in the law of marriage man and wife are bound down to mutual fidelity (M. 9, 101), and in the religious law, e. g. at the sacrifices, the husband and the wife are always mentioned as a duality. Āp. 2, 11, 12 expressly lays down that a man should not take any more wives if he has a spouse who takes part in his religious duties and has borne him children.