History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v2.c26.187

v2.c26.187

Śrīkṛṣṇa, a commentator of the Dāyabhāga and author of Dāyakramasaṁgraha, and Raghunandana, author of Smṛtitattva, and others elaborate these rules. The Full Bench of the Calcutta High Court in *Guru Govind Shaha Mandal* ¹¹¹³ *v. Anand Lal Ghose Mazumdar* gives an elaborate statement of the several sapiṇḍas. But as those rules have reference only to succession, they are passed over here. Raghunandana in his work on marriage called Udvāhatattva ¹¹¹⁴ quotes the famous verse of the Matsyapurāṇa, 'the fourth and (two beyond him) among ascendants are partakers of *lepa* (the leavings of the boiled rice that become attached to the hand of him who offers piṇḍas), the father and the rest (i. e. two more beyond him) are partakers of the piṇḍa; he who offers the piṇḍa to them is the seventh; sāpiṇḍya extends to seven generations' and refers the readers to his Śuddhitattva for elucidation. Raghunandana does not give any definition of sapiṇḍas for marriage, but discusses the conflict about the several texts such as '7th on the father's side and 5th on the mother's side'. He expressly says (p. 110 of Udvāhatattva) that the words 'who is not a sapiṇḍa of one's mother' are still applicable even if several females intervene between the common ancestor and the girl proposed to be married. He then adds a special rule that descendants of what are called pitṛbandhus and mātṛbandhus also are forbidden if they are within 7 degrees and 5 degrees respectively from these bandhus. The pitṛbandhus ¹¹¹⁵ of a person are his paternal grand-father's sister's sons, his paternal grandmother's sister's sons and his father's maternal uncle's sons; while mātṛbandhus are a person's mother's father's sister's sons, mother's mother's sister's sons, mother's maternal uncle's sons. These two latter may be illustrated by two diagrams.