sum stipulated in the contract.[1] The offspring of these temporary unions, or of any sort of union, are all equal before the Persian law, which merely subjects them to the right of primogeniture. At the death of the father, the eldest son, though born of a slave mother, takes two-thirds of the succession. The remaining third of the property is divided amongst the other children, but in such a way that the share of the boys is half as large again as that of the girls.[2] This right of primogeniture and these advantages granted to boys exclude all idea of maternal filiation in the customs of modern Persia, and we have seen that there was no trace of it in ancient Persia; this race therefore seems not to have passed through the phase of the maternal family, nor perhaps through that of the clan.
V. The Family in India.
In India, on the contrary, certain customs and traditions appear to be true survivals, relating to an ancient organisation of exogamic clans with maternal filiation. But of these old customs the sacred books retain no trace. In Vedic India the family is already patriarchal, since the husband is called pati, which signifies master; but this Vedic family is of a most restricted kind. It is composed, essentially and simply, at first of the husband and wife, who become the father and the mother; then of the son and of the daughter, who are mutually brother and sister. The grandparents belong to the anterior family; the uncles and aunts are part of the collateral families.[3] The Code of Manu is already less exclusive, for it admits, as we shall see, a fictitious filiation; but it is still patriarchal, and, according to Manu, the daughters occupy an entirely subordinate position. It is a son and a chain of male descendants that it is important to have; religion even makes it an obligation; for the ancestors of any man who has not a son to perform in their honour the sacrifice
