ABSTRACT
WHEN a Brahmin finds that he has no male issue, whether by reason 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 a son by means of adoption, in order that he may, at least fictitiously, fulfil the great debt to kis ancestor8, 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.
