Chap. III.] HINDOO GOVERNMENT. 101
" Let mutual fidelity continue until death." But even in this point gross a.d. — inequality is apparent. A husband, though married in legal form, may abandon his wife on the ground of blemish or disease fraudulently concealed from him. Relation He may also supersede her by another wife on the vague charges of drinking ana wife. spirituous liquors, acting immorally, showing hatred, being mischievous and wasting his property, or speaking unkindly. In all these cases, indeed, some degree of blame attaches to her, but she may in like manner be superseded when the worst that can be said of her is that she is unfortunate. Thus she may be superseded in the eighth year if she has proved barren, or in the tenth if all her children are dead, and in the eleventh if she has borne only daughters. Sliould she resent this harsh usage, and depart in wrath from the house, " she must either instantly be confined, or abandoned in the presence of the whole family." On the other hand, whatever be the husbands faults, though "inobser- vant of approved usages, or enamoured of another woman, or devoid of good qualities," he "must constantly be revered as a god by a virtuous wife." Though addicted to gaming, fond of spirituous Hquors, or diseased, she is liable, if she neglect him, to be " deprived of her ornaments and household furniture," and cannot get quit of him except in the not very probable case of his not only de- serting her, but living abroad without reasonable cause for at least three years. On the dissolution of marriage by death the woman is still made the principal sufterer. He, if the survivor, may immediately supply her place, but she, if once a widow, is expected to spend the remainder of her life in the painful austerities "becoming a woman devoted to one only husband," and must not "even pro- nounce the name of another man." Nothing, indeed, is said of any objigation to submit to the horrible sacrifice of suttee, but her second marriage, if not absolutely illegal, is stigmatized in such language as the following: — "The mar- riage of a widow " is not " even named in the laws concerning marriage." Another practice, however, not unknown to the Jewish law, that of raising up issue to a brother, appears, though not without considerable hesitation, to have been permitted, not only to the higher classes, in the special case of a husband dying " after troth verbally plighted, but before consummation," but to all Sudras, whenever the husband died without male issue. The practice, while permitted, being reprobated as " fit only for cattle," afterwards fell into desuetude.
Immediately connected with the law of husband and wife is that of^^'^^
•^ succession.
inheritance. In the Hindoo code the rights of succession are considered subser- vient to the due performance of obsequies to ancestors, and hence the heir to whom the performance of these obsequies properly belongs is always preferred. To this is to be ascribed the important place occupied by the eldest son as the representative of the family. " By the eldest, at the moment of his birth, the father, having begotten a son, discharges his debt to his own progenitors ;
the eldest son, therefore, ought to manage the whole patrimony," and the other
