Page:History of India Vol 1.djvu/88

58 There are two curious verses which seem to lay down the law of inheritance and are therefore of peculiar interest. We give a translation of them here:—

"The father who has no son honours his son-in-law, capable of begetting sons, and goes (i.e. leaves his property) to the son of his daughter. The sonless father trusts in his daughter's offspring and lives content.

"A son does not give any of his father's property to a sister. He gives her away to be the wife of a husband. If a father and mother beget both son and daughter, then one (i.e. the son) engages himself in the acts and duties of his father,, while the other (the daughter) receives honour."

This is the first germ of the Hindu law of inheritance, which makes the son, and not the daughter, the inheritor of his father's property and religious duties, and which allows the property to go to the daughter's son only in the absence of male issue. We think we discover the first germs of the Hindu law of adoption, too, in such passages as the following:—

"A son begotten of another may yield us happiness, but can never be regarded or accepted as one's own. And verily he ultimately goes back to his own place. Therefore may a son be newly born unto us who will bring us food and destroy our foes."

We will now supplement our account of domestic customs by making some extracts with regard to funeral rites. Yama in the Rig-Veda is the god of the heaven of the righteous, the god who rewards the