7.2 Adoption in Traditional Hindu Law

The institution: dattaka (or datta-putra) adoption — the son given in adoption: a religious act with sacramental consequences, performed by the father (the dattha) with Vedic rites, transferring the boy to the adoptive family's gotra and line; The purposes: funeral rites and lineal continuation (putra for pinda-dana and the line's salvation), the adopter's spiritual merit — NOT primarily child welfare; the adopted son's obligations to TWO fathers in the classical commentators' refinements (the son of the body for the natural father's rites, the son of adoption for the adoptive — the dvija tensions); Who could adopt: the male head (a married man, with the wife's concurrence in the classical rules; the sonless man the paradigm adopter); who could be adopted: a son — daughters not adoptable in the shastric frame (the gender exclusion the modern law reversed); The classical conditions' echoes: the adopter's sonlessness; the adoptee's age-and-caste matching; the ceremony's performance (the giving-and-receiving, the rites); no re-adoption; the once-given-never-recalled rule; The historical significance for the exam: the dattaka's logic — adoption as the adopter's religious instrument — explains the old Ain's design (son-adoption, the adopter's convenience) and throws the modern reversal into focus: adoption now exists for the child.