Exploring the Beneficiaries: A Gendered Peep into the Institution of Niyoga in Early India

Abstract

In patriarchal societies around the world the absence of a male issue has been regarded a serious social aberration. Alternatives have been worked out to surmount the problem. Early Indian literature apprises us of one such option; niyoga or levirate wherein a widow or the wife of an impotent man was temporarily made to cohabit with a designated man in order to procure a son who would be regarded as the son of his mother’s legal husband. It clearly came within the fold of apaddharam or the law of exigency, something that could be resorted to only in the time of emergency. There seems to be a divergence of views in the narrative tradition and normative [ shastriya] literature on the issue of its genesis and purpose. But what comes out clearly is that niyoga was hailed as a ‘strategy of heirship’. The article intends to look at the trajectory of the practice in ancient and early medieval India from the vantage of principal female actors. A host of queries would be taken up. It would be worth dwelling upon the issue of its sustainability and popularity; whether the practice of niyoga was designed to benefit a particular section of the society or was meant for larger social good. Did the practice of niyoga bring women some solace or turned out to be an exploitative way of controlling their sexuality? Did the woman have the right to reject it or enter in out of their volition? How did men negotiate this practice? Did it bruise their masculinity or repair, at least in some cases? Did the practice also have caste and class angles to it? Can we detect divergence in the views of Brahman theoreticians and members of other castes such as kshatriyas for whom its practical application amounted to a survival tactic? Who eventually stood to gain from the practice and its eventual fading away? What was the legal and social status of the daughter born of such unions? We shall take up these issues for analysis in the article.