3 o8 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



his court or members of his harem, though it is not 

 explicitly so stated. However, compliance with the 

 advice was not followed by conception on the part of 

 any of them. The king w r as in despair, and when the 

 men of the city renewed their reproaches he asked 

 them again what he was to do. " Sire," they answered 

 " these women must be immoral and void of merit. 

 They have not sufficient merit to conceive a son. But 

 because they do not conceive you are not to relax your 

 efforts. The queen-consort, Silavati, is a virtuous 

 woman. Send her out into the streets. A son will be 

 born to her." The tale avers that "the king readily 

 assented, and proclaimed by beat of drum that on the 

 seventh day from that time the people were to assemble 

 and the king would expose Silavati giving the act a 

 religious character. And on the seventh day he had 

 the queen magnificently arrayed and carried down from 

 the palace and exposed in the streets." But Sakka 

 came from heaven to the rescue disguised as a brahman 

 and with merely a touch of his thumb rendered her 

 pregnant of the Bodhisatta. 1 



If we turn from Buddhist tales to the sacred law of 

 the Hindus we find an unmistakable emphasis laid on 

 the necessity for children, and above all for a male 

 child. A son is an absolute necessity to carry on the 

 ancestral rites. " He only," says the great law-book 

 of Manu, " is a perfect man who consists [of three 

 persons united], his wife, himself, and his offspring." 

 " Immediately on the birth of his first-born a man 

 is [called] the father of a son and is freed from the 

 debt to the manes ; that [son], therefore, is worthy to 

 receive the whole estate. That son alone on whom 

 1 Jatakci) v. 141 (Story No. 531). 



