Vedic Index of Names and Subjects v1.c3.s21.925

v1.c3.s21.925

There is again no evidence to show whether a son, when grown up, normally continued to stay with his father, his wife becoming a member of the father’s household, or whether he set up a house of his own: probably the custom varied. Nor do we know whether the son was granted a special plot of land on marriage or otherwise, or whether he only came into such property after his father’s death. But any excessive estimate of the father’s powers over a son who was no longer a minor and naturally under his control, must be qualified by the fact that in his old age the sons might divide their father’s property,¹⁶ or he might divide it amongst them,¹⁷ and that when the father-in-law became aged he fell under the control of his son’s wife.¹⁸ There are also obscure traces that in old age a father might be exposed, though there is no reason to suppose that this was usual in Vedic India.¹⁹