History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v4.c63.t2.49.1

v4.c63.t2.49.1

*The results of adoption*—Adoption has the effect of transferring the adopted person from his natural family into the adoptive family. Adoption confers upon the adopted person the same rights and privileges in the family of adoption as the son of the body (*aurasa*) except in a few well defined cases. The basic text on this point is that of Manu¹³⁰⁷ IX. 142 which may be literally rendered as follows: 'The son given should not take the *gotra* (the family name) and the wealth of his natural father; the *piṇḍa* (the cake of boiled rice offered to deceased ancestors in śrāddhas) follows the *gotra* and the wealth (i. e. is invariably concomitant with them); of him who gives (his son in adoption) the *svadhā* (obsequial rites) ceases (so far as that son is concerned)'. The preceding verse (Manu IX. 141) states that the adopted son takes the wealth of his adoptive father and all that this verse says is that, after adoption, the son given in adoption does not take the name of his natural father and has no right in the wealth that then is the natural father's and that he does not perform the obsequial and śrāddha rites for his natural father. But from this verse a learned Hindu Judge derived the sweeping proposition that 'the theory of adoption depends upon the principle of a complete severance of the child adopted from the family in which he is born, both in respect to the paternal and maternal line, and his complete substitution into the adopter's family as if he were born in it'.