History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v2.c26.317

v2.c26.317

The question of the sale of girls in marriage. has been from the remotest ages bound up with the question of the father's power over his children Ṛg. I. 116. 16¹¹⁸⁰ and I. 117. 17 refer to the story of Ṛjrāśva who was deprived of his eye-sight by his father because the former gave a hundred rams to a she-wolf. The verses refer to some natural phenomena under a metaphorical garb and cannot be used for drawing the inference that a father could in law deprive his son of eye-sight at his will. The story of Śunaḥśepa (Ait. Br. 33) shows that in rare cases the father did sell his son. The passage of the Nirukta about the power to sell, to gift away or to abandon daughters has been already cited (p. 505). The Vas. Dh. S.¹¹⁸¹ (XVII. 30–31) says ‘Śunaḥśepa is an example of the son bought’ (one of the twelve kinds of sons). The same sūtra (XVII. 36-37) defines the *apaviddha* kind of son as one, who being cast off by his parents, is accepted (as a son) by another. Manu IX. 171 also defines the ‘apaviddha’ in the same way. Vas. Dh. S. (XV. 1-3) propounds the absolute power of the parents over their children in the words ‘man produced from seed and uterine blood springs from the father and the mother; (therefore) the parents have power to give, to sell or to abandon him; but one should not give nor accept an only son’. Here Vas. states the right of *patria potestas* several centuries before Justinian, who makes the vain boast (Institutes, Lib. I. Tit. IX. 2) that ‘no other people have a power over their children such as we have over ours’. Manu (VIII. 416) and the Mahābhārata¹¹⁸² (Udyoga 33. 64) both state that the wife, the son and the slave are without wealth and that whatever they acquire belongs to him whose they are. Manu (in V. 152) says that ‘gift (by the father of the bride) is the source of (the husband's) ownership (over her)’. But gradually the rigour of the father's power was lessened by other competing considerations such as the ideas that the son was the father himself born again, and that the son conferred great spiritual benefit on the souls of the father and his ancestors by the balls of rice offered in *śrāddha*. So gradually the father's power over the son became restricted. Kauṭilya (III. 13) gives the interesting information that *mlecchas* incur no blame by selling or pledging their children, but an *ārya* cannot be reduced to the state of slavery. Yāj. II. 175 and Nârada (dattāpradānika 4) both forbid the gift of one's son or wife. Kātyāyana¹¹⁸³ says that though the father has powers of control over the wife and the son, he has not the power to sell or make a gift of his son. Yāj. (II. 118-119) modified the rule about the son's acquisitions also. Manu VIII. 389 prescribes a fine of 600 *paṇas* for abandoning one's mother, father, wife or son when they are not sinners. Vide Yāj. II. 237, Viṣṇu Dh. S. V. 113-114, Kauṭilya III. 20 (p. 199) for a similar provision. Manu (VIII. 299-300) restricted a man's power to award corporal punishment for misconduct to his wife, son or slave to striking with a rope or a thin piece of bamboo.