Kisari Mohan Ganguli - The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

"Yudhishthira said, 'There are men who belong to the mixed castes, and who are of very impure birth. Though presenting the features of respectability, they are in reality disrespectable. In consequence of these external aspects we may not be able to know the truth about their birth. Are there any signs, O grandsire, by which the truth may be known about the origin of such men?"

SECTION XLIX

"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[301]. 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.[302] 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.[303] 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).[304] 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?'