Hindu Law and Custom (Recht und Sitte) c7.735

c7.735

Adoption common in modern India. At the present day adoption is extraordinarily in vogue, specially among the higher castes who are still ruled by the old belief in the necessity of a son for offering sacrifices to the manes, and also among the lower castes who take the higher castes to be their ideal. A father who has no children certainly often postpones the adoption till it is too late, be it that he is afraid of the costs of the ceremonies of adoption and the maintenance of the adoptive son, or that he always hopes for an heir of his own, or that, if rich, he fears to come into close intimacy with the family of the adoptive son or to run the risk of having an ungrateful person in his adopted son who may not be attached to him and may even try to take his life². Thus it comes to pass very often that only after the death of the husband his widow adopts, of course in his name, and it is a disputed point whether a command of the husband given before his death for this act is necessary and whether the widow has eventually to depend upon