tortoise, the man replies, “another
tortoise.” Several similar queries bring
the same reply, until in frustration
the man bursts out “It’s no use trying to
trick me—after this, it is tortoises all
the way down!”
In an Indian context, the infinite
regress fallacy is seen as an extended
case of the fallacy of self-residence, and
equally objectionable.
Inherence
In the Nyaya philosophical school,
inherence (samavaya) is the name for a
weak relational force that is assumed to
connect objects and their attributes—
for example, connecting the color red
with a particular ball, and thus making
the ball red. See samavaya.
Inheritance
Traditional Hindu law has several differ-
ent patterns for inheritance. A few
communities in southern India practice
matrilinear succession, in which
inheritance is passed through the
mother’s line.
In much of the rest of India,
inheritance is patrilineal. Patrilineal
inheritance takes two major forms,
according to the prescriptions found
in two major legal texts: the Dayabhaga
in the region of Bengal; and throughout
much of the rest of India, variants
on the Mitakshara.
The Mitaksharavests joint family
property only in males born into the
male line. All males have equal shares
in the family property, although the
head of the family is normally in
charge of administering it. Under this
arrangement, the death of a male
heir automatically increases the share
of all the other surviving males,
whereas the birthof a male decreases
this share. The Mitakshara gives
women no right to inherit family
property, although women generally
have rights to personal wealth
(stridhan) that was theirs to bequeath
and inherit.
The Mitaksharasystem was based on
the principle of survivorship, under
which only living people could inherit
property. The Dayabhagamodel stresses
succession, under which sons do not
become shareholders of the family
property at birth, but upon the death of
their father. If a son happens to die
before his father, the son’s heirs (includ-
ing his wife and daughters) become
inheritors, not in their own right, but as
representatives of the deceased heir.
Under the Dayabhaga model both
widows and daughters could have a
share in family property, and they are
allowed to act as agents in their own
right. In theory this seems far more
advantageous to women, but in fact it is
believed to have had some gruesome
consequences. When the British first
came to Bengal late in the eighteenth
century, they were horrified by the
prevalence of sati, the rite in which a
widow would be burned on her hus-
band’s funeral pyre. Based on admittedly
incomplete evidence, it seems that sati
was not nearly so common in many
other parts of India. One theory to
explain this discrepancy is that sati was
the family’s way to keep their daughter-
in-law—who was an outsider to the
family—from being able to gain control
over their ancestral property.Initiation
In general, an initiation is a ritual
in which a person is given certain
new rights, capacities, and responsibili-
ties. In a Hindu religious context,
there are two important rites of
religious initiation.
One of these is the upanayana sam-
skara, an adolescent religious initiation
performed on a “twice-born” male—
that is, a member of the brahmin, ksha-
triya, or vaishyagroup—which is also
known as the “second birth.”
The other rite of initiation, diksha,
is conferred on a person at the pleasure
of a guruor religious preceptor and
has no limitations on who or when it
can be received.Initiation