Rights in the Family
Appendix 12. (1529).
The first-born and the older children dominate wherever domestic society is strong. There are many reasons for this:
1. The moral reason, which supposes that the eldest has more knowledge and experience. Hence, the general respect for old age. This respect was greater in primitive times when everything was learned through experience and tradition, and individual activity was little developed.
2. A reason dependent upon individual Right, that is, the child who comes first into the world is the first to occupy with his father the family goods.
3. A reason dependent upon domestic-social Right, that is, which originates from a dynastic feeling according to which a father sees his line assured in the first-born. In the East, such a feeling was elevated to the order of religious feelings in the following way. Filial piety pushed to extremes deified the ancestors. Descendants thought they fulfilled a religious duty by giving existence to a child who would perpetuate the line of their predecessors, now accepted as domestic gods. Entirely taken up with the thought of satisfying the feeling of dynasty which they imagined subsisted in their dead ancestors, they forgot that they were satisfying their own desire of succession. Indians who did not satisfy such a religious obligation were condemned to hell.
In the Mânava-Dharmasâstra (bk. 9: 105), it first says:
| At the death of the father, the eldest son, if he is sufficiently virtuous, can take possession of the entire patrimony. The other children must live under his tutelage as they lived under that of their father. |
The condition, `if he is sufficiently virtuous', indicates the moral reason, which varies according to the quality of the eldest brother. Then follows the domestic-religious reason:
| At the moment of birth of the first-born son, even before the child has undergone the sacred rite, the man becomes father and has paid his debt to the ancestors. The eldest son must, therefore, have everything. The son, through whose birth the man pays his debt and obtains immortality, was generated to fulfil a duty. The sages consider other children to be born of love. (bk. 9: 105-106). |
Where such a value is put on the first-born, families easily remain united and grow into tribes. The Indian legislator continues to describe the duty of the first-born, at the death of the father, to govern his brothers (as long as they are united) with paternal love and prudence, and to determine the advantages that fall to him in the case of division (bk. 9: 107, 126).