There are certain peculiarities in the relation of father and son in India which have given rise to the suggestion that there is no relationship between sonship and marriage, and that the notion of sonship in India is founded entirely on that of ownership--ownership of the mother and a consequent ownership of the child. But the arguments by which this view is supported do not appear to be sufficient. The rights of a father over his son, and of a husband over his wife are, it is true, so far like the rights of ownership that both are in the nature of rights _in rem_--that is, they are available against any person who infringes them; but it is contrary to established usage to speak of rights over a free person as rights of ownership, and no one is prepared to say that the wife or child are slaves of the father. There is no reason for abandoning in India the ordinary view, that sonship depends on marital cohabitation between the father and mother. There are undoubtedly in certain special and exceptional cases methods of acquiring sons otherwise than by marital cohabitation. But these contrivances can only be resorted to when there is no son by marriage, and the fiction which, as we shall see, is resorted to to conceal the true nature of these contrivances, would be entirely meaningless, as would most of the rules which regulate them, if sonship in general was based entirely on ownership. There were at one time more contrivances than there are now for supplying the want of male issue by marriage. At one time a son could be begotten for a man who was dead by cohabitation of his widow with a member of his family or perhaps even with a stranger. This is generally looked upon as a survival of polyandry. But this practice, though alluded to in the Laws of Manu as still subsisting, is now entirely obsolete. So there was a custom at one time by which a father could appoint a daughter to raise up male issue for him. The head of the family could also, if he had no son born in wedlock, accept as his own any child born in his house whose mother was not known or not married. So he could accept as his own the son of his wife born before marriage, or the son of his concubine. In the last three cases he may have been, and probably was, himself the father. But none of these contrivances for procuring a son is now in use. The only contrivance now employed for procuring a son, in the absence of one born in wedlock, is by taking into the family the son of another man who is willing to part with him. This is called adoption. There are two kinds of adopted sons: one called dattaka and the other kritrima. The former is in use all over India; the latter only in Mithila. The following rules apply to the dattaka born of adoption: A man can only adopt who is without issue capable of inheriting his property, of performing the funeral ceremonies for himself, and of making the necessary offerings to his ancestors. A woman cannot adopt. But by the authority of her