History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v2.c26.330

v2.c26.330

'the wife is indeed a friend, the daughter is distress (or humiliation ), the son is light in the highest heaven'. The Mahābhārata (Ādi. 159. 11) in a similar vein says 'the son is one's self, the wife is one's friend, but the daughter is indeed a difficulty'. But all the same the Gṛhyasūtras like Āp. (15. 13) call upon the father to greet his daughter also with a mantra when he returned from a journey, the difference being that in the case of the son there is kissing of the son's head and muttering of certain mantras in his right ear. Manu (IX. 232) advises the king to award death sentence to him who kills a woman, a child or a brāhmaṇa. Manu IX. 130 (= Anuśāsana 45. 11) expressly says that 'just as the son is one's own self, so is the daughter like the son; how can another person take the wealth (of the deceased) when his daughter who is his own self is there to take it'? Nārada¹¹⁹⁰ (dāyabhāga v. 50) reasons that both the son and the daughter continue the line of the father and therefore in the absence of the son the daughter succeeds as heir. Bṛhaspati exclaims 'the daughter is born from the limbs of the parents as much as the son; when she is alive how can another take her father's estate'? Bāṇa, who as a great poet had unparalleled sympathy with the emotions and feelings of the average man, makes even the king Prabhākaravardhana say about his daughter what every Indian father has felt for thousands of years 'this rule of law laid down by some one viz. that one's own children (daughters) sprung from one's body, fondled on one's knees and whom one would never forsake, are taken away all of a sudden by persons (husbands) who till then were quite unfamiliar. It is on account of this sorrow that although both (son and daughter) are one's own children the good feel sorrow when a daughter is born and who offer water in the form of tears to their daughters at the very time of their birth'. A daughter was not greeted at birth, not because the father had no love for her, but because he felt that a daughter meant a source of anxiety all her life to him. It was the great concern felt for a daughter's well-being in life and her character that made the parents anxious that no daughter be born to them. Society expected a very high moral rectitude from women and treated lapses of men with leniency. This is finely expressed in the Rāmāyaṇa (Uttara-kāṇḍa 9. 10-11). Ancient literature did not everywhere treat women with scorn and contempt. It has already been shown how highly the wife was regarded even in the most ancient days as a man's half. Ṛg. III. 53. 4 speaks of the wife as a haven of rest (jāyed-astam). The Chān. Up.¹¹⁹¹ looks upon the sight of a woman in a dream as very auspicious and as prognosticating success in religious rites already undertaken. Manu (III. 56 = Anuśāsana 46. 5), though he has said, as will be shown later on, some very hard things about women, was not unmindful of the honour due to them and says in a chivalrous spirit 'where women are honoured there the gods love to reside; where they are not honoured, there all religious acts come to nought.' Maidens were regarded as pure (vide p. 296 above) and auspicious. When the king passed through his capital it was customary to greet him with fried grain showered by maidens (Raghuvaṁśa II. 10). The Śaunaka-kārikā¹¹⁹² (ms. in Bombay University Library folio 22 b) includes a maiden among the eight objects which were auspicious. The Droṇaparva (82. 20-22) mentions numerous objects which Arjuna looked at and touched as auspicious when starting for battle, among which well-decked maidens are mentioned. Gobhila-smṛti II. 163 says that one that sees on rising from bed in the morning among others a woman whose husband is living is free from all difficulties. The Vāmana-purāṇa (14. 35-36) mentions several objects which are auspicious when one is about to leave home, among which figure brāhmaṇa maidens. Vide Sm. C. I. p. 168.