The status of the widow in the Smriti law of this period is a reflex of its strong emphasis upon the wife’s supreme duty of serving her husband. It is true that Manu and Yajnavalkya recognise, as of old, the son of the remarried woman among those who are entitled to inherit the father’s property in the absence of more re­spectable classes of sons.

Again Manu, following the older precedent, permits a virgin widow to perform a fresh sacrament of marriage. Neverthe­less we are expressly told that remarriage of widows is not in accordance with the prescribed rule. The widow is recommended instead to live a life of strict chastity.

On the other hand, the Smriti law is as yet completely silent about the burning of widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands. Yajnavalkya, moreover, introduces us, for the first time, to a very important right of the widow, name­ly that of inheriting the husband’s property in the absence of sons. The practice of sati was rare and confined to royal families.

On the whole, the widow’s lot in this, as in the earlier and later periods, was hard; her helplessness and misery are vividly brought out in the Mahabharata. In the Milindpanho the widow heads a list of persons who are despised and condemned in this world.

ADVERTISEMENTS:

In the far South, as far as the scanty evidence enables us to judge, the widow’s lot was essentially similar. From the works of the Sangam Age we learn that ordinarily widows were expected to lead a life of self-denial and that the custom of sati was already known and extolled as a high ideal.

Female ascetics of the Brahmanical order, and Buddhist and Jain nuns were evidently numerous in these times. On the other hand, the class of female temple-attendants (devadasi), so very common in the following centuries, is as yet of minor importance. Harlots are condemned in strong terms by Manu even the accomplished courtesan (ganika), who held a recognised posi­tion in city life during the early Buddhist times, is included among those whose food is unfit to be eaten.

But the realistic account in Vatsvayana’s Kamasutra shows that the ganika still occupied an honoured place in society. The vivid description of the life of the courtesan in the Tamil works of the Sangan Age amplifies the much shorter notice in Vatsyayana work.