ancestors has been translated into a ceremonial cult of the
ancestral manes, which constitutes the primary duty and function of
every new head of the family. Hence the Hindu joint family system which
keeps the whole property of the family as well as the governance of all
its members under the sole control of the head of the family. Hence also
the necessity of early marriage, lest death should overtake the Hindu
before he has begotten the son upon whose survival the performance of
the rites essential, not only to his own future felicity, but to that of
all his ancestors depends, and, as an alternative, to mitigate the awful
consequences of the default of heirs male of his own body, the
introduction of adoption under conditions that secure to the adopted
son precisely the same position as a real son would have enjoyed. Hence
again the inferiority of woman, whom early marriage tended to place in
complete subjection to man. Her chief value was that of a potential
breeder of sons. In any case, moreover, she passed on her marriage
entirely out of her own family into that of her husband, and terribly
hard was her lot if she were left a widow before having presented her
husband with a son. Even if she were left an infant widow of an infant
husband and their marriage could not possibly have been consummated, she
was doomed to an austere and humiliating life of perpetual widowhood,
whilst, on the other hand, if she died, her widowed husband was enjoined
to marry again at once unless she had left him a son. To explain away
this cruel injustice, her fate was supposed to be due to her own Karma,
and to be merely the retribution that had overtaken her for sins
committed in a former existence, which condemned her to be born a woman
and to die a childless wife, or worse still, to survive as a childless
widow. The misfortune of the widowed husband who was left without a son
should logically have been imputed in the same way to his own Karma, but
it was not. All through life, and in death itself, man was exalted and
woman occupied a much lower plane, though in practice this hardship was
mitigated for the women who bore sons by the reverence paid to them in
their homes, where their force of character and their virtues often gave
them a great and recognised ascendancy. However hard the laws that
governed the Hindu family might press on individual members, the family
itself remained a living organism, united by sacred ties--indeed more
than