Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c5.42

v1.c5.42

1 There is no distinction between son’s son and daughter’s son (Manu, ix, 130; Vishṇu, xv, 47). If there are no sons, and also the mother is dead, then the daughter inherits the father’s property, and no one else; for she is sprung from his body just like the son (Nārada, xiii, 50; Bṛihaspati, xxv, 55 ff.; Yājñavalkya, ii, 135 f.; Vishṇu, xvii, 4 ff.). But cp. Āpastamba, ii, 6, 14, 2-6; Gautama, xxviii, 21 ff.; Vasiṣṭha, xvii, 81 ff.; Manu, ix, 185 ff. (and Bühler’s notes on it, SBE, xxv, p. 365). So the Mahānirvāṇatantra, xii, 36, states that the daughter of the man without wife or son gets the father’s inheritance, even if there is a brother of the father’s; and according to 55 the daughter-in-law or the granddaughter inherits before the dead man’s own father. According to Vishṇu, xviii, 34 f., the mother and the unmarried daughter get a share of the man’s estate according to the son’s share (putrabhāgānusāreṇa), that is to say, exactly so much as the sons who are equal to them in the caste have the right to inherit, an arrangement, therefore, which provides for a testator with wives of differing castes, and probably only for one without a son. If the father share out his estate himself, then according to Nārada, xiii, 13, the unwedded daughter receives as much as the sons between the eldest and youngest. But cp. Bṛihaspati, xxv, 64; Manu, ix, 118; Yājñav., ii, 124 (the brothers must give the unwedded sisters a fourth part of their own share). According to Yāska’s Nirukta, iii, 4, the children inherit equally, regardless of sex (see Bühler’s Manu, p. lxi). The woman’s estate or mother’s own property (strīdhana, yautuka) falls to her daughter. Vishṇu, xvii, 18 ff.; Gautama, xxviii, 24; Baudhāyana, ii, 2, 3, 43; Yājñavalkya, ii, 143-5; Agnipurāṇa, transl. by Manmatha Nath Dutt, p. 925, etc. Cp., too, especially Manu, ix, 130-9; J. J. Meyer, Über das Wesen d. altind. Rechts-schriften u. ihr Verhältnis zu einander u. zu Kauṭilya (Leipzig, 1927), p. 73 ff.