Hindu Law and Custom (Recht und Sitte) c7.803

c7.803

While the lists of the items of property mentioned here and elsewhere indicate the almost exclusive pursuit of agriculture, the purely arithmetical calculation of shares in other rules of partition, such as Gaut. 28, 9 f., M. 9, 112 ff. etc., are applicable also to property earned through commerce and industry. Analogous proportional numbers are used to indicate the shares of inferior, illegitimate and adoptive sons and not only the Smṛtis but also the Mah. 13, 47, 4 ff. prescribes a system of partition in the ratio 4: 3: 2: 1 specially for the sons of a Brahman by different wives of the four castes, and Vi. 18, 1-40 develops this system casuistically for all possible analogous cases. Yet not only unequal marriages were disapproved already at an early period (§ 18) but also the theory of the right of primogeniture and in general that of unequal division of property met with determined opposition already at a very early period and it was recognised only as a local custom (Āp. 2, 14, 6 ff.) beside the theory of equal shares mentioned by all the authors and it is later reckoned among the obsolete customs.