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Baudhayana does not adopt a harsh attitude towards
windows. He admits the system of Niyoga as a legal institution and
does not refer to it as a peculiar custom, as the later lawgivers have
described it, 57
and he thus says, ‘A widow shall avoid during a year the use of
honey, meat, spirituous liquor, and salt, and sleep on the ground‘. 58
He then refers to an earlier law giver, whose book is lost to
us, and says, ‘Maudgalya declares that she shall do so during six
months. After the expiry of that time she may, with the permission of
her gurus, bear a son to her brother-in-law, in case she has no
son.’
But a barren woman, one who has borne sons, one who is
past child bearing, one whose children are all dead, and one who is
unwilling, 59
are not allowed to come under this rule as the spirit of this practice
will not be fulfilled by them.Baudhayana allows re-marriage of women
and the sons of such re-married women were recognized as legal heirs.
'He is called the son of a twice married woman
(Paunarbhava) who is born of a re-married female’. 60
Baudhayana like Gautama permits intercaste
marriage, and the sons of such marriages were legal heirs to the
property of their father.
‘If there are some born
of different wives of different castes, they should make ten portions
of the ancestral property and take four shares, three, two and one
according to the order of the castes’
61 The above shows that though monogamy was the general usage,
polygamy was not debarred. But
what follows contradicts the above statement regarding property, and
shows that in Baudhayana's time caste did not play an important role,
in society.
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