Though polygamy is tolerated by the Indian laws, because it tends to promote population, the _Bharta_, whatever number of wives he may maintain, has only one lawful spouse, to whom he is actually married, and who superintends his domestic concerns. She is called in the Samscred _Pànigrahidì_, the woman with whom he joined hands; _Pradhaninì_, the chief; _Mahishì_, the great; _Cudbumbinì_, the housewife; _Sadhadharmanì_, the woman of a thousand services, virtues and advantages. The rest are called only _Bhòguinya_, concubines. The children of the former are called _Sudharmaputra_, that is, lawful, and inherit the property left by their father; but the children of the concubines, as soon as born, are degraded into the cast of the _Shudra_, which may with propriety be considered as a nursery for the illegitimate children of the higher casts, as almost all concubines belong to that of the _Shudra_, and as the rule in law, _partus sequitur ventrem_, prevails, in full force, throughout all India. It thence follows, that a prince who espouses a woman of a cast different from his own, cannot make her children his heirs, and much less appoint them his successors. Such was the case, while I was in India, with the king of Cochin, _Perumpadapil_, and the king of Travancor, _Rama Varmer_. When I resided at _Tiruvandaburam_, I saw with my own eyes that the children of the latter were educated in the same manner as the _Shudras_. The particular object of this law is, that persons of a low condition may never rise to the throne or the priesthood.