Niyoga
idea · 3 works · 4 mentions · 6 anchored passages
appointment · appointment of a widow · levirate marriage · marrying a brother's wife · niyoga · raising up seed to a brother · the Levirate · the Niyoga
in the texts
Dissertations on Early Law and Custom
The ancient Hindu custom of appointing a substitute to raise up a son for a man who has none, of which the Levirate is a special case.
But all the artificial expedients, save one, for providing sons have long since been exploded in India.
Now all ancient opinion, religious or legal, is strongly influenced by analogies, and the child born through the Niyoga is very like a real son.
In the opinion of some of the Hindu doctors, these consequences might be averted by an institution which has lately received a great deal of attention, known commonly as the Levirate, but called by the Hindus, in its more general form, the Niyoga.
De Monogamia
Mosaic law requiring marriage to a deceased brother's childless widow
If, then, because it is enjoined in the law that a man should take his brother's wife, when the brother has died without children, in marriage, to raise up seed to his brother—and this can the oftener befall a single person, according to that crafty question of the Sadducees—they therefore think that a frequency of marriages is permitted in other cases also, they must first understand the reason o …
Manusmṛti
The custom of appointing a widow or a wife (in cases of family extinction) to a brother-in-law or kinsman to beget offspring for a deceased or impotent husband.
When the family line is in danger of extinction, desired offspring may be obtained by a woman, through *niyoga* (the appointment of a wife to bear a son by another), from a brother-in-law or from a *sapiṇḍa*.
But when the purpose of the appointment to a widow has been fulfilled according to the rule, they should behave towards each other as a *guru* and a daughter-in-law.
He who has been appointed to a widow should, anointed with ghee and silent by night, beget one son, and by no means a second.