“No person is to obtain the land of a _co-heir_, as of a brother, or of a cousin, or of a second cousin, by claiming it as heir to that one co-heir who shall have died without leaving an heir of his body: but by claiming it as heir _to one of his own parents_, who had been owner of that land until his death without heir, whether a father, or grandfather, or great-grandfather: that land he is to have, if he be the nearest of kin to the deceased.”(135) This of course refers to inheritance within the group of co-heirs, the members of which held their position by virtue of their common relationship within certain degrees to the founder. And we may infer that emphasis was thus laid on the proof of relationship by _direct descent_, in order to prevent shares in the inheritance passing from hand to hand unnoticed, beyond the strict limit where subdivision could be claimed _per capita_ by the individual representatives of the diverging _stirpes_. (M62) The kindred in the _Ordinances of Manu_ is divided into two groups:— 1. Sapindas, who owe the _funeral cake_ at the tomb. 2. Samānodakas, who pour the _water libation_ at the tomb. “To _three ancestors_ the water libation must be made; for _three ancestors_ the funeral cake is prepared; the fourth (descendant or generation) is the giver (of the water and the cake); the _fifth has properly nothing to do_ (with either gift).”(136) This may be put in tabular form:— Receivers of water. 1. Great-grandfather’s great-grandfather. 2. Great-grandfather’s grandfather. 3. Great-grandfather’s father. Receivers of cake. 1. Great-grandfather. 2. Grandfather. 3. Father. 4. Giver of cake and water 5. Excluded Or inversely:— Givers of cake or _Sapindas_. Householder Brothers 1st cousins 2nd cousins Pourers of water or _Samānodakas_. 3rd cousins 4th cousins 5th cousins Within the _Sapinda_-ship of his mother, a “twice-born” man may not marry.(137) Outside the _Sapinda_-ship, a wife or widow, “commissioned” to bear children to the name of her husband, must not go. “Now _Sapinda_-ship ceases with the seventh person, but the relationship of a Samānodaka (ends) with the ignorance of birth and name.”(138) All are Sapindas who offer the cake to the same ancestors. (M63) The head of the family would himself offer or share with all his descendants in the offering of the one cake to his great-grandfather, his grandfather, and his father. And if this passage is taken in conjunction with the one quoted just above, the number sharing in the cake-offering, limited as in the text at the seventh person from the first ancestor who receives the cake, is just sufficient to include the great-grandson of the head of the family, supposed to be making the offering.