MOTHERRIGHT 309 



he throws his debt and through whom he obtains 

 immortality, is begotten for [the fulfilment of] the 

 law." l A son being so important, where a man failed 

 to beget a son on his wife various devices were resorted 

 to in order to supply his place. A daughter might be 

 appointed to bear a son who would fulfil the rites. 

 Or a son of another member of the same caste might 

 be given with certain rites by his parents and adopted 

 by the sonless man. A son so adopted would cease 

 to have any claim on his own father and family and 

 would be deemed instead to be the son of him to 

 whom he had been transferred, would perform his 

 funeral rites and take his estate. 2 But there was still 

 another course which, repugnant though it may be to 

 our moral code, was at least fraught with more regard 

 for the purity of the race than that suggested by the 

 men of Kusavati to their king. After expounding 

 the duty of a husband to guard his wife and to keep 

 her pure, because " offspring, [the due performance of] 

 religious rites, faithful service, highest conjugal happi- 

 ness and heavenly bliss for the ancestors and oneself 

 depend on one's wife alone," and proclaiming that 

 "she who, controlling her thoughts speech and acts, 

 violates not her duty towards her lord, dwells with him 

 [after death] in heaven, and in this world is called 

 by the virtuous a faithful [wife]," Bhrigu is represented 

 as plunging into a grave discussion whether the male 

 issue of a woman belongs to her lord or to the begetter. 

 " Those who, having no property in a field, but 

 possessing seed-corn, sow it in another's soil, do indeed 

 not receive the grain of the crop which may spring 



1 Sacred Boobs, xxv. 335, 346. Cf. xiv. 271. 



2 Id. xxv. 353, 355, 361 



