Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 408

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CHAPTER XX
Adoption.
— Rules
regarding the Partition of Property.
When a Brahmin finds that he has no male issue,
whether
of the barrenness of his wife or through the
untimely death of all the sons he has had by her, he is
permitted, nay bound, by the rules of his caste to procure
by reason
a son by means of adoption, in order that he may, at least
fictitiously, fulfil the great debt to his ancestors, namely, the
propagation of a direct line of posterity. Although marriage
constitutes the perfect state of man, this perfection is
nevertheless deficient when a man does not leave a son
behind him to perform his obsequies and this defect alone,
according to Hindu writers, is quite sufficient to deprive
him of happiness in the next world.
This notion prevails so strongly among the Hindus that
I have known barren women not only consenting to their
husbands taking other wives, but even earnestly advising
them to do so, and helping them in their quest. There is
not one of them, however, who is not fully alive to the
annoyances and discomforts