Hindu Law and Custom (Recht und Sitte) c7.757

c7.757

The compass of the joint-family was and is frequently very considerable. Not only parents and children, brothers and step-brothers, live on the common property, but it may sometimes include ascendants, descendants and collaterals up to many generations. On account of the custom of child-marriage the paterfamilias may become a grandfather even in the prime of life and often lives even to be a great-grandfather. Originally the circle of Sapiṇḍa-relations, connected with one another through the sacrifices to the manes, extended from the great-grandfather to the great-grandson in the ascending and the descending orders ¹. The great-great-grandson does not belong to it (Baudh. 1, 11, 9), and thus in the opinion of Devala and others the right of inheritance among relations (kulya) living together extends to the fourth generation, but by others the limits are still more widened or are, in part, narrowed too.