The Kinds of Sons and Their Shares

Bhishma lay on the bed of arrows with the plain of Kurukshetra around him, and by now the questions the king carried out to him every morning had left the war a long way behind. What Yudhishthira brought him on this day was not a question about the soul. It was a question about property.

He began, as he always began, by saying why he was asking this man and nobody else.

"Thou art fully conversant with the ordinances of all the scriptures," he said. "Thou art the foremost of those that are acquainted with the duties of kings. Thou art celebrated over the whole world as a great dispeller of doubts. I have a doubt, do thou explain it to me, O grandsire. As regards this doubt that has arisen in my mind, I shall not ask any other person for its solution."

Then the doubt.

"It has been laid down that a Brahmana can take four wives: one that belongs to his own order, one that is a Kshatriya, one that is a Vaisya, and one that is a Sudra. Tell me, best of the Kurus, which amongst those sons deserves to inherit the father's wealth, one after another? Who amongst them shall take what share of the paternal wealth? I desire to hear this, how the distribution has been ordained amongst them of the paternal property."

It is a household question of the plainest kind. A man dies. There are four mothers in the house and children by all of them, and the fields and the cattle and the cart have to be split before the season turns. Yudhishthira was about to rule a kingdom where that quarrel would come before him in some village every month, and he wanted the answer before it did.

Bhishma's first move was to take away half the premise of the question.

"The Brahmana, the Kshatriya, and the Vaisya are regarded as the three regenerate orders," he said. "To wed in these three orders has been ordained to be the duty of the Brahmana. Through erroneous judgment or cupidity or lust, a Brahmana takes a Sudra wife. Such a wife, however, he is not competent to take according to the scriptures."

A man who did it, he said, attained to a low end in the next world and had to undergo expiation according to the rites, and the expiation must be twice heavier if a child came of it.

And having said that the fourth marriage ought never to have taken place, he began to count out the shares of the son it produced.

"I shall now tell thee how the paternal wealth is to be distributed," Bhishma said.

The first thing that happens is not a division at all. Before anything is counted, the son born of the Brahmana wife takes two objects out of his father's property: a bull of good marks, and the best car or vehicle in the house. Those come off the top, and no share is reduced by their going.

What remains after that is divided into ten equal portions, and the ten are distributed like this.

The son by the Brahmana wife takes four.

The son born of the Kshatriya wife takes three. He is, Bhishma said, without doubt possessed of the status of a Brahmana; it is only the distinction attaching to his mother that puts him second.

The son born of the Vaisya wife takes two.

That leaves one portion out of the ten, and it is here that the ordinance does something strange with itself. It has been said, Bhishma told the king, that the son begotten by a Brahmana upon the Sudra wife should not take any portion of the father's wealth at all, for he is not to be considered an heir. And then, in the same breath: a little, however, should be given to him, and the one remaining share should be given to him out of compassion.

He would not let that word pass without stopping on it.

"Compassion is one of the highest virtues," he said. "It is through compassion that something is given to the son of the Sudra wife. Whatever be the object in respect of which compassion arises, as a cardinal virtue it is always productive of merit."

But he fenced the gift in twice. The tenth part is the son's only when the father has actually given it to him; he shall not take it if his sire does not give it. And whether the father happens to have other children by his other wives or has none at all, nothing more than a tenth is ever to come to this son. The compassion is real, and it is capped.

Within each group the arithmetic is simple. All the sons born of the same mother, or of mothers of the same order, share equally the portion that is theirs.

One more line closed the account, and it was aimed at the father rather than the heirs. If a Brahmana happens to have more wealth than is needed to maintain himself and his family for three years, he should spend that surplus on sacrifices. A Brahmana should never acquire wealth for nothing.

Having settled the sons, Bhishma turned aside to the women of the house, and the rules he gave there are short and worth having in full.

The highest sum that a husband should give his wife is three thousand coins of the prevailing currency. That is the ceiling on the gift, not on her use of it. What the husband gives the wife, Bhishma said, the wife may spend or dispose of as she likes. It is hers, and the giving is finished when it is given.

If the husband dies childless, the wife shall enjoy all his wealth. She is to live on it, be maintained by it, hold it; she is not to sell it or otherwise dispose of any portion of it. The estate keeps its shape and she keeps the estate.

Against that stands the other half of the rule. The wife should never take any portion of her husband's wealth without his knowledge. What she is given she owns outright; what she takes unasked she does not.

And then the sentence that reaches furthest of anything in the section.

"Whatever wealth the Brahmana wife may acquire by gift from her father should be taken, after her death, by her daughter," Bhishma said, "for the daughter is like the son. The daughter, O king, has been ordained in the scriptures to be equal to the son, O delighter of the Kurus."

Property that has come down the mother's side goes down the mother's side. It does not fall into the ten portions and it is not touched by the arithmetic of the brothers. What her father gave her, her daughter takes, and the reason offered is not custom or convenience but a flat statement of equivalence set down twice in two sentences.

"Even thus hath the law of inheritance been ordained, O bull of Bharata's race," he said. "Remembering these ordinances about the distribution and disposal of wealth, one should never acquire wealth uselessly."

That is twice now that he had ended a passage on inheritance by warning against the accumulation of the thing being inherited. The old man dividing property into portions for a king who had just won the largest inheritance in the world kept returning, at the end of every list, to the observation that most of it should never have been piled up in the first place.

Yudhishthira, however, had not been satisfied by the ten shares. He had been counting them while they were being read out, and he had found something in them that he did not think held together.

"If the son born of a Sudra woman by a Brahmana father has been declared in the scriptures to be disentitled to any wealth," the king said, "by what exceptional rule then is a tenth part of the paternal property to be given to him?"

Then the sharper half of the objection.

"A son born of a Brahmana wife by a Brahmana is unquestionably a Brahmana. One born of a Kshatriya wife or of a Vaisya wife, by a Brahmana husband, is similarly invested with the status of a Brahmana. Why then are such sons to share the paternal wealth unequally? All of them, thou hast said, are Brahmanas, having been born of mothers that belong to the three higher orders equally entitled to the name of regenerate."

It is a good objection. If the status conferred is identical, the shares should be identical, and Bhishma had made them four and three and two.

"All spouses in this world are called by the name of Data," Bhishma answered. "Although that name is applied to all, yet there is this great distinction to be observed."

And he made the distinction with a case rather than an argument. Suppose a Brahmana has already married his three other wives, and takes a Brahmana wife the very last of all. She shall still be regarded as the first in rank among all the wives, and as deserving of the greatest respect, and the order of the wedding days has nothing to do with it.

What that precedence means in practice is a list of household offices, and Bhishma gave the list.

In her apartments are kept the articles the husband needs for his baths, his personal decorations, the washing of his teeth, the application of collyrium to his eyes. In her apartments are kept the Havya and the Kavya and everything else he requires for the performance of his religious acts. If the Brahmana wife is in the house, no other wife is entitled to attend to these needs of the husband. His food and drink, his garlands, his robes, his ornaments, all of these should be given to him by her hand, because she is foremost in rank and consideration among all his spouses.

"These are the ordinances of the scriptures as laid down by Manu," he said. "Even this is seen to be the course of eternal usage. If a Brahmana, led by lust, acts in a different way, he shall come to be regarded as a Chandala among Brahmanas."

The man who lets the household rearrange itself around his appetite does not lose caste in law. He loses it in name, and Bhishma used the harshest name available.

Having ranked the wives, Bhishma went back and applied the same reasoning to their sons.

The son of the Kshatriya wife has been said to be equal in status to the son of the Brahmana wife. For all that, a distinction attaches to the second, because the Brahmana is superior to the Kshatriya in respect of the order of birth, and the Kshatriya woman cannot be regarded as equal to the Brahmana woman in that respect. Therefore the son of the Brahmana wife is first in rank, and therefore it is he who takes, one after another, all the best things among his father's possessions: the bull of good marks and the best of the vehicles, before the ten portions are ever counted out.

Then came the question of why the Kshatriya son should stand above the Vaisya son, and here the old man stopped dividing property and gave a reason that was really about the world.

"Prosperity, kingdom, and treasury belong to the Kshatriya," he said. "All these have been ordained for the Kshatriya. The whole earth, O king, with her belt of seas, is seen to belong to him. By following the duties of his own order, the Kshatriya acquires an extensive affluence. The sceptre of royalty is held by him. Without the Kshatriya there can be no protection."

And he made plain what protection meant, to a man who had spent eighteen days learning it.

"Coveted by thieves and others, the possessions of all men are protected by Kshatriyas in the observance of the duties assigned to their order. Indeed, wealth and spouses and every other possession owned by people would have been forcibly taken away but for this protection. The Kshatriya, as the king, becomes the protector or rescuer of all the others."

The order that keeps every man's property is ranked above the order that trades in property, and that is the whole of the reason the Kshatriya wife's son takes three portions where the Vaisya wife's son takes two.

He balanced it before he moved on. The Brahmanas are highly blessed, for they are the deities of the very deities, and the Kshatriyas, following the ordinances laid down by the rishis, should worship them according to due rites. The man with the sceptre guards everyone, and bows to one.

"Thou hast duly said what the rules are that apply to Brahmanas," Yudhishthira said. "What, however, are the rules that apply to the others?"

"For the Kshatriya, two wives have been ordained," Bhishma said. "The Kshatriya may take a third wife from the Sudra order. Such practice prevails, it is true, but it is not sanctioned by the scriptures."

The property of a Kshatriya is divided into eight shares. The son of the Kshatriya wife takes four. The son of the Vaisya wife takes three. The remaining eighth belongs to the son of the Sudra wife, and belongs to him under the same condition as before: he takes only when the father gives, and not otherwise.

For the Vaisya, one wife has been ordained. A second is taken from the Sudra order, and again the practice prevails and again the scriptures do not sanction it, and again there is a difference of status between the two women. A Vaisya's wealth is divided into five portions. The son of the Vaisya wife takes four. The fifth belongs to the son of the Sudra wife, if the father gives it, and not if he does not.

The Sudra has one wife, taken from his own order, and can under no circumstances take another. And here the arithmetic simply stops. Even if he happens to have a century of sons by that one spouse, all of them share equally the wealth he leaves behind. There is nothing to grade, because there is only one kind of mother in the house.

That, said Bhishma, is the general rule everywhere. In all the orders, the children born of the spouse taken from the husband's own order share the father's wealth equally.

Equally, with one adjustment.

"The eldest son's share shall be greater than that of every other son," he said, "for he shall take one share more than each of his brothers, consisting of the best things of his father. Even this is the law of inheritance, O son of Pritha, as declared by the Self-born himself."

And the same order runs down the line. Where the mothers are equal and the sons are equal, the first-born takes one share more; the son next in age takes the share next in value; the youngest takes the share that belongs to the youngest. Marriages too should go in that order, the elder ones always preceding the younger ones.

"Thus among spouses of all orders, they that belong to the same order with the husband are regarded as the first," Bhishma finished. "Even this is what was declared by the great rishi Kasyapa, the son of Marichi."

The shares were done. The king now asked about the people the shares had never been written for.

"Through inducements offered by wealth, or through mere lust, or through ignorance of the true order of birth, intermixture happens of the several orders," Yudhishthira said. "What are the duties of those born in the mixed classes?"

In the beginning, Bhishma said, the Lord of all creatures created the four orders and laid down their duties, for the sake of sacrifice. Then came the rule that governs all the rest.

A man takes birth in himself in two of his wives: the one from his own order, and the one from the order immediately below it. Those children carry his status. The children he begets on wives lower than that are inferior, and their status is settled not by the father but by the mother.

So the Brahmana's four wives yield two kinds of children. By the Brahmana and Kshatriya wives, Brahmanas. By the Vaisya wife, a son of lower standing. By the Sudra wife, a son called Parasara, a name meaning one born of a corpse, because the Sudra woman's body is held as inauspicious as a corpse. His duty is service to his father's race; even if he is older than his father's other sons, he must serve them and hand over whatever he earns.

The Kshatriya's three wives yield the same pattern: sons of his own order by the Kshatriya and Vaisya wives, and by the Sudra wife a son called Ugra. The Vaisya takes birth in himself in both his wives. The Sudra has one wife of his own order, and her son is a Sudra.

Then the other direction, and a harder set of names. If a man of a lower order begets a son upon a woman of a superior order, that son falls outside the four pure orders altogether.

A Kshatriya upon a Brahmana woman begets a Suta, whose work is the reciting of eulogies of kings and great men. A Vaisya upon a Brahmana woman begets a Vaidehaka, given charge of the bars and bolts that protect the privacy of women of respectable households; no cleansing rites are laid down for him. A Vaisya upon a Kshatriya woman begets a Vandi or Magadha, whose duty is eloquent recitation of praise. A Sudra upon a Kshatriya woman begets a Nishada, whose work has reference to the catching of fish. A Sudra upon a Vaisya woman begets an Ayogava, whose work is that of a Takshan, a carpenter.

And a Sudra upon a woman of the foremost order begets a Chandala, endued with a fierce disposition, who must live in the outskirts of cities and towns, and whose assigned duty is that of the public executioner.

The list did not stop there, because the mixed classes marry.

People of the mixed castes, Bhishma said, beget children of their own status upon women of their own castes, children of lower status upon women below them, and children lower still upon women above them. In this way, from those outside the four orders and those further outside again, fifteen classes multiply, equally low or lower.

He named them, and named their work, which is how they are known.

Magadhas upon women of the class called Sairindhri beget children who adorn the bodies of kings, well acquainted with the preparation of unguents, the making of wreaths, and the manufacture of articles for the decoration of the person; free by birth, they still lead a life of service. Magadhas of another class upon Sairindhri women beget the Ayogava, who make nets for fish and fowl and animals of the chase. Vaidehas upon Sairindhri women beget the Maireyakas, who manufacture wines and spirits. From the Nishadas spring the Madgura and the Dasas, who ply boats. From the Chandala springs the Swapaka, who keeps guard over the dead.

Women of the Magadhi caste, by union with those four, produce four more who live by deceit: the Mansa, the Swadukara, the Kshaudra and the Saugandha. From the Nishadas springs the Madranabha, whose members ride on cars drawn by asses. From the Chandalas springs the Pukkasa, who eat the flesh of asses and horses and elephants, cover themselves with garments stripped from human corpses, and eat from broken earthenware. From the Vaidehaka spring the Kshudra, and the Andhra who live in the outskirts of towns. The Charmakara upon a Nishada woman begets the Karavara. From the Chandala springs the Pandusaupaka, who makes baskets from cleft bamboo. The Nishada upon a Vaidehi woman begets the Ahindaka.

Then Bhishma made the silence of the scriptures explicit. Duties have been laid down for the four principal orders only. As regards the others the scriptures say nothing, and those for whom no duties have been assigned need have no fears as to what they do to earn their livelihood. They build their habitations where four roads meet, or in crematoria, or on hills, or among forests and trees. The ornaments they wear are made of iron.

And then he opened the one door in the whole catalogue.

"Without doubt," he said, "by assisting kine and Brahmanas, and practising the virtues of abstention from cruelty, compassion, truthfulness of speech, and forgiveness, and, if need be, by preserving others by laying down their very lives, persons of the mixed castes may achieve success. I have no doubt, O chief of men, that these virtues become the causes of their success."

"There are men who belong to the mixed castes, and who are of very impure birth," Yudhishthira said. "Though presenting the features of respectability, they are in reality disrespectable, and we may not be able to know the truth about their birth. Are there any signs, O grandsire, by which the origin of such men may be known?"

The king wanted a test he could apply from the outside, and the answer moved the test somewhere else entirely.

"One's purity of birth is to be ascertained from one's acts," Bhishma said, "which must resemble the acts of those who are admittedly good and righteous."

He gave the marks. Disrespectable behaviour. Acts opposed to those laid down in the scriptures. Crookedness and cruelty. Abstention from sacrifices and other acts that lead to merit. A son receives the disposition of either the sire or the mother, and sometimes catches the dispositions of both, and cannot in the end conceal it.

"As the cub of a tiger or a leopard resembles its sire and dam in form and in its stripes or spots," he said, "even so a person cannot but betray the circumstance of his origin. However covered may the course of one's descent be, if that descent happens to be impure, its character is sure to manifest itself. A person may, for purposes of his own, choose to tread on an insincere path, displaying such conduct as seems to be righteous. His own disposition, however, in the matter of those acts that he does, always proclaims whether he belongs to a good order or to a different one."

So far the doctrine runs in one direction only. Then Bhishma turned it round and ran it back the other way, and the two sentences he used are the ones the whole discourse is remembered for.

"If a person happens to belong to a superior order but still if he happens to be divested of good behaviour, he should receive no respect or worship. One may worship even a Sudra if he happens to be conversant with duties and be of good conduct."

Birth may be read from conduct. Then let it be read the whole way. The man of the highest order whose conduct is bad has told you what he is, and you owe him nothing; the man of the lowest order whose conduct is good has told you the same, and you may worship him.

"A person proclaims himself by his own acts and by his good or bad disposition and birth," Bhishma said. "If one's race of birth happens to be degraded for any reason, one soon raises it and makes it resplendent and famous by one's acts."

"Do thou discourse upon the different kinds of sons," Yudhishthira said, "and upon the persons entitled to have them. Disputes frequently arise with respect to sons, and we are stupefied."

Bhishma counted the kinds. The son of one's loins is one's own self. The son begotten upon one's wife by a man invited for the task is Niruktaja; by somebody without permission, Prasritaja; by a man fallen from his status, Patitaja. There is the son given, the son made, one called Adhyudha, and the son born of a maiden in her father's house, who is Kanina. Besides these, six Apadhwansajas and six Apasadas.

The Apadhwansajas are the sons a Brahmana begets upon wives of the three inferior orders, a Kshatriya upon wives of the two orders below his, and a Vaisya upon a wife of the order below his. The Apasadas run the other way: a Sudra upon a Brahmana woman begets a Chandala, upon a Kshatriya woman a Vratya, upon a Vaisya woman a Vaidya; a Vaisya upon a Brahmana woman a Magadha, upon a Kshatriya woman a Vamaka; a Kshatriya upon a Brahmana woman a Suta.

"It cannot be said, O king," Bhishma added, "that these six are no sons."

Then the old quarrel: is a man's son the one born in his soil, or the one begotten from his seed?

"His is the son from whose seed he has sprung," Bhishma said. "If, however, the owner of the seed abandons the son born of it, such a son becomes his upon whose spouse he has been begotten."

He would not soften it. A man who begets a son and then abandons him is not the sire of that son, for vital seed only cannot create sonship. When a man desiring a son weds a girl already quick with child, the boy is his, the fruit of his own soil. The child will carry the begetter's face, and it will make no difference.

And there is a third kind, in whose case neither seed nor soil counts.

"When a person takes up and rears a son that has been cast off on the road by his father and mother," Bhishma said, "and fails to find out his parents after search, he becomes the father of such a son, and the latter becomes his made son. Not having anybody to own him, he becomes owned by him who brings him up."

That son takes the order of the man who raised him. His purificatory rites follow the practices of the rearer's race, and his bride comes from the rearer's order.

"I have thus told thee everything appertaining to thy questions," Bhishma said. "What else dost thou wish to hear?"