Page:The English Works of Raja Rammohun Roy Vol 2.djvu/240

228 to be founded on benefits conferred. ‘By the eldest son, as soon as born, a man becomes the father of male issue, and is exonerated from debt to his ancestor; such a son, therefore, is entitled to take the heritage.’” The author next shews, that as the benefits conferred by a widow on her deceased husband, by observing a life of austerity, are inferior only to those procured to him by a son, grandson, and great grandson, her right to succession should be next to theirs in point of order, (page 173.) “But, on failure of heirs down to the son’s grandson, the the wife, being inferior in pretentions to sons and the rest, because she performs acts spiritually beneficial to her husband from the date of her widowhood, (and not, like them, from the moment of their birth,) succeeds to the estate in their default.” He thus concludes: “Hence [since the wife’s right of succession is founded on reason] the construction in the text of Sunkhu, &c. must be arranged by connexion of remote terms, in this manner: ‘The wealth of a man, who departs for heaven, leaving no male issue, let his eldest [that is, his most excellent] wife take; or, in her default, let the parents take it: on failure of them, it goes to the brothers.’ The terms ‘if there be none,’ [that is, if there be no wife,] which occur in the middle of the text, are connected both with the preceding sentence ’it goes to his brothers,’ and with the subsequent one, ‘his father and mother take it.’ For the text agrees with passages of Vishnoo and Yagnuvulkyu, [which declare the wife’s right,] and the reasonableness of this has been already shewn.” (p. 174.)

17. It is however evident that the author of the Dayubhagu gives here an apparent preference to the authority of one party of the saints over that of the other,