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.
But the practice here and there received an extension even more revolting to modern delicacy than the shape which it takes in the Levirate.
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.
This bestial law is condemned by the learned twice-born;
A widow must not be appointed to another man by the twice-born;
In the sacred formulas for marriage, *niyoga* is nowhere mentioned;