History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v2.c28.s2.44

v2.c28.s2.44

As the foremost duty of the wife was to honour and serve the husband, she must always stay with him and she had a right of residence in the house. A wife was further entitled to be maintained in the house by the husband. A verse quoted by Medhātithi on Manu III. 62 and IV. 251 and by the Mit. on Yāj. I. 224 and II. 175 and which occurs in some MSS. as a spurious verse after Manu XI. 10 says 'Manu declares that one must maintain one's aged parents, a virtuous wife and a minor son by doing even a hundred bad acts'.¹³²³ Dakṣa II. 36 ( = Laghu-Āśvalāyana ¹³²⁴ I. 74 ) defines *poṣyavarga* ( persons whom every one, however poor, is bound to maintain ) as follows: 'the parents, the *guru*, the wife, children and a helpless man who has taken shelter with one, a guest and fire constitute poṣyavarga.' Manu VIII. 389 prescribes that the man who abandons and does not maintain his parents, wife, and son, when they are not outcasted, should be fined 600 paṇas by the king. Yāj. I. 74 requires the husband to maintain a wife whom he has superseded in the same way as before, otherwise he would be guilty of great sin. Yāj. I. 76 says that if a man abandoned a wife who was obedient, diligent, the mother of a son, and agreeable in speech, he was to be made to give one-third of his property to the wife, but if he had no property he had to maintain her. Nārada ( strīpuṁsa 95 ) has a similar provision. The Viṣṇu Dh. S. V. 163 made the husband punishable like a thief, if he abandoned his wife. The husband was required by Yāj. I. 81 to be devoted to his wife, since women are to be guarded ( against falling into error ). Vide Yāj. I. 78 also. Manu IV. 133 forbids adultery with another's wife and Manu IV. 134 ( = Anuśāsana 104. 21 and Mārkaṇḍeya-purāṇa 34. 62–63) observes that there is nothing that harms one's life as much as adultery. Viśvarūpa ¹³²⁵ on Yāj. I. 80 points out that the guarding of a wife from evil can be secured only by being devoted to her and not by beating her, as, if the husband were to beat her, it might endanger her life. Manu (IX. 5–9) also calls upon men to guard women, and ( in IX. 10–12 ) says that they cannot be guarded by imprisonment or force, but by engaging them in looking to the income and expenditure, the furniture, beauty and purity of the house and the cooking and by inculcating on them the value of a virtuous life. In spite of this the husband possessed certain powers of physical correction over the wife which were the same as those possessed by a teacher over a pupil or a father over a son, viz. he could administer beating with a rope or a thin piece of bamboo on the back but never on the head. Vide Manu VIII. 299–300 ( cited above on p. 363 ) which are the same as Matsyapurāṇa 227. 152–154. It will be seen that about two thousand years ago Manu did not confer greater powers of correction and restraint of the wife on the husband than the Common Law of England allowed to husbands even in the 18th century.¹³²⁶