"Bhishma said, 'A person that is born of an irregular union presents
diverse features of disposition. One's purity of birth, again, is to be
ascertained from one's acts which must resemble the acts of those who are
admittedly good and righteous. A disrespectable behaviour, acts opposed
to those laid down in the scriptures, crookedness and cruelty, and
abstention from sacrifices and other spiritual acts that lead to merit,
proclaim one's impurity of origin. A son receives the disposition of
either the sire or the mother. Sometimes he catches the dispositions of
both. A person of impure birth can never succeed in concealing his true
disposition. As the cub of a tiger or a leopard resembles its sire and
dam in form and in (the matter of) its stripes of spots, even so a person
cannot but betray the circumstance of his origin. However covered may the
course of one's descent be, if that descent happens to be impure, its
character or disposition is sure to manifest itself slightly or largely.
A person may, for purposes of his own, choose to tread on an insincere
path, displaying such conduct as seems to be righteous. His own
disposition, however, in the matter of those acts that he does, always
proclaims whether he belongs to a good order or to a different one.
Creatures in the world are endued with diverse kinds of disposition. They
are, again, seen to be employed in diverse kinds of acts. Amongst
creatures thus employed, there is nothing that is so good or precious as
pure birth and righteous conduct. If a person be born in a low order,
that good understanding which arises from a study of the scriptures fails
to rescue his body from low acts. Absolute goodness of understanding may
be of different degrees. It may be high, middling, or low. Even if it
appears in a person of low extraction, it disappears like autumnal clouds
without producing any consequences. On the other hand, that other
goodness of understanding which, according to its measure, has ordained
the status in which the person has been born, shows itself in his
acts. If a person happens to belong to a superior order but still if
he happens to be divested of good behaviour, he should receive no respect
or worship. One may worship even a Sudra if he happens to be conversant
with duties and be of good conduct. A person proclaims himself by his own
good and acts and by his good or bad disposition and birth. If one's race
of birth happens to be degraded for any reason, one soon raises it and
makes it resplendent and famous by one's acts. For these reasons they
that are endued with wisdom should avoid those women, among these diverse
castes mixed or pure, upon whom they should not beget offspring.'
"Yudhishthira said, 'Do thou discourse to us, O sire, upon the orders and
classes separately, upon different kinds of sons begotten upon different
types of women, upon the person entitled to have them as sons, and upon
their status in life. It is known that disputes frequently arise with
respect to sons. It behoveth thee, O king, to solve the doubts that have
taken possession of our minds. Indeed, we are stupefied with respect to
this subject.'
"Bhishma said, 'The son of one's loins is regarded as one's own self. The
son that is begotten upon one's wife by a person whom one has invited for
the task, is called Niruktaja. The son that is begotten upon one's wife
by somebody without one's permission, is Prasritaja. The son begotten
upon his own wife by a person fallen away from his status is called
Patitaja. There are two other sons, viz., the son given, and the son
made. There is another called Adhyudha. The son born of a maiden in
her father's house is called Kanina. Besides these, there are six kinds
of sons called Apadhwansaja and six others that are Apasadas. These are
the several kinds of sons mentioned in the scriptures, learn, O Bharata!
"Yudhishthira said, 'Who are the six that are called Apadhwansajas? Who
also are the Apasadas? It behoveth thee to explain all these to me in
detail.'
"Bhishma said, 'The sons that a Brahmana begets upon spouses taken from
the three inferior orders, those begotten by a Kshatriya upon spouses
taken from the two orders inferior to his own, O Bharata, and the sons
that a Vaisya begets upon a spouse taken from the one order that is
inferior to his,—are all called Apadhwansajas. They are, as thus
explained, of six kinds. Listen now to me as I tell thee who the
Apasadas, are. The son that a Sudra begets upon a Brahmana woman is
called a Chandala. Begotten upon a Kshatriya woman by a person of the
Sudra order, the son is called a Vratya. He who is born of a Vaisya woman
by a Sudra father is called a Vaidya. These three kinds of sons are
called Apasadas. The Vaisya, by uniting himself with a woman of the
Brahmana order, begets a son that is called a Magadha, while the son that
he gets upon a Kshatriya woman is called a Vamaka. The Kshatriya can
beget but one kind of son upon a woman of a superior order. Indeed, the
son begotten by a Kshatriya upon a Brahmana woman, is called a Suta.
These three also are called Apasadas. It cannot be said, O king, that
these six kinds of sons are no sons.'
"Yudhishthira said, 'Some say that one's son is he that is born in one's
soil. Some, on the other hand, say that one's son is he who has been
begotten from one's seed. Are both these kinds of sons equal? Whore,
again, is the son to be? Do thou tell me this, O grandsire!
"Bhishma said, 'His is the son from whose seed he has sprung. If,
however, the owner of the seed abandons the son born of it, such a son
then becomes his upon whose spouse he has been begotten. The same rule
applies to the son called Adhyudha. He belongs to the person from whose
seed he has taken his birth. If, however, the owner of the seed abandons
him, he becomes the son of the husband of his mother. Know that even
this is what the law declares.'
"Yudhishthira said, 'We know that the son becomes his from whose seed he
has taken birth. Whence does the husband of the woman that brings forth
the son derive his right to the latter? Similarly, the son called
Adhyudha should be known to be the son of him from whose seed he has
sprung. How can they be sons of others by reasons of the engagement about
owning and rearing them having been broken?'
"Bhishma said, 'He who having begotten a son of his own loins, abandons
him for some reason or other, cannot be regarded as the sire of such a
son, for vital seed only cannot create sonship. Such a son must be held
to belong to the person who owns the soil. When a man, desiring to have a
son, weds a girl quick with child, the son born of his spouse must belong
to him, for it is the fruit of his own soil. The person from whose vital
seed the son has sprung can have no right to such a son. The son that is
born in one's soil but not begotten by the owner, O chief of Bharata's
race, bears all the marks of the sire that has actually begotten him (and
not the marks of one that is only the husband of his mother). The son
thus born is incapable of concealing the evidences that physiognomy
offers. He is at once known by eyesight (to belong to another). As
regards the son made, he is sometimes regarded as the child of the person
who has made him a son and so brings him up. In his case, neither the
vital seed of which he is born nor the soil in which he is born, becomes
the cause of sonship.'
"Yudhishthira said, 'What kind of a son is that who is said to be a made
son and whose sonship arises from the fact of his being taken and brought
up and in whose case neither the vital seed nor the soil of birth, O
Bharata, is regarded as the cause of sonship?'
"Bhishma said, 'When a person takes up and rears a son that has been cast
off on the road by his father and mother, and when the person thus taking
and rearing him fails to find out his parents after search, he becomes
the father of such a son and the latter becomes what is called his made
son. Not having anybody to own him, he becomes owned by him who brings
him up. Such a son, again, comes to be regarded as belonging to that
order to which his owner or rearer belongs.'
"Yudhishthira said, How should the purificatory rites of such a person be
performed? In whose case what sort of rites are to be performed? With
what girl should he be wedded? Do thou tell me all this, O grandsire!"
"Bhishma said, 'The rites of purification touching such a son should be
performed conformably to the usage of the person himself that raises him,
for, cast off by his parents, such a son obtains the order of the person
that takes him and brings him up. Indeed, O thou of unfading glory, the
rearer should perform all the purificatory rites with respect to such a
son according to the practices of the rearer's own race and kinsmen. As
regards the girl also, O Yudhishthira, that should be bestowed in
marriage upon such a son, who belongs to the order of the rearer himself,
All this is to be done only when the order of son's true mother cannot be
ascertained. Among sons, he that is born of a maiden and he that is born
of a mother that had conceived before her marriage but had brought him
fourth subsequent to that are regarded as very disgraceful and degraded.
Even those two, however, should receive the same rites of purification
that are laid down for the sons begotten by the father in lawful wedlock.
With respect to the son that becomes his sire's in consequence of his
birth in the sire's soil and of those sons that are called Apasadas and,
those conceived by the spouse in her maidenhood but brought forth after
marriage, Brahmanas and others should apply the same rites of
purification that hold good for their own orders. These are the
conclusions that are to be found in the scriptures with respect to the
different orders. I have thus told thee everything appertaining to thy
questions. What else dost thou wish to hear?"
