of modern Persia, and we have seen that there was no trace of it in ancient Persia; this race therefore seems not to have passed through the phase of the maternal family, nor perhaps through that of the clan. V. _The Family in India._ In India, on the contrary, certain customs and traditions appear to be true survivals, relating to an ancient organisation of exogamic clans with maternal filiation. But of these old customs the sacred books retain no trace. In Vedic India the family is already patriarchal, since the husband is called _pati_, which signifies master; but this Vedic family is of a most restricted kind. It is composed, essentially and simply, at first of the husband and wife, who become the father and the mother; then of the son and of the daughter, who are mutually brother and sister. The grandparents belong to the anterior family; the uncles and aunts are part of the collateral families.[1073] The Code of Manu is already less exclusive, for it admits, as we shall see, a fictitious filiation; but it is still patriarchal, and, according to Manu, the daughters occupy an entirely subordinate position. It is a son and a chain of male descendants that it is important to have; religion even makes it an obligation; for the ancestors of any man who has not a son to perform in their honour the sacrifice to the manes, or the _Srâddha_, are excluded from the celestial abode. It is necessary to have a son to “pay the debt of the ancestors.” “By a son, a man gains heaven; by the son of a son, he obtains immortality; by the son of this grandson, he rises to dwell in the sun.”[1074] The Code of Manu already proclaims the right of primogeniture. It is by means of the eldest son that a man pays the debt of the ancestors; it is therefore he who ought to have everything; his obedient brothers will live under his guardianship, as they have lived under that of the father,[1075] on condition, however, that if the sons are of different mothers, the mothers of the younger ones are not of superior rank to that of the mother of the eldest son.[1076] The son of a brahmanee, for example, would not yield precedence to the son of a _kchâtriya_: caste is always of the first consideration. But the quality of son may be acquired otherwise than by community of blood. Thus a husband may, as we have seen, have his sterile wife fertilised by his younger brother. The child thus conceived is reputed to be son of the husband; nevertheless, in the succession, he is given the share of an uncle only, and not the double share to which he would have had a right if he had been the real son[1077] by flesh and blood. If a man has the great misfortune to have only daughters, he can obviate this by charging his daughter to bear him a son. For this purpose, it suffices for him to say mentally to himself: “Let the male child that she gives birth to become mine, and fulfil in my honour the funeral ceremony.”[1078] The son thus engendered by mental incest and by suggestion, as we