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Marriage and Position of Woman
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widow becomes the direct heir to the property of her deceased husband regardless of the fact whether she has got a son or not. The cause for showing favour to a widow in preference to her son in Jaina Law is not far to seek. The soul of the law of Hindu inheritance is the ‘Pindadāna' or offering of oblations by sons to their manes. Son, therefore, is the most important legal entity in the Hindu jurisprudence. That is why in all Hindu law books, son has been accorded a prior position to his widowed mother. In fact, male descendants have been treated with greater favour than female ones throughout the legal literature of the Hindus. On the other hand, the presence or absence of a son does not make a Jaina person spiritually meritorious or otherwise. Many of the Jaina Tirthankaras were son-less and yet they attained to the highest and the most supreme status; and many people descended into hells although they had sons. It is not the teaching of Jainism that a person can benefit the soul of another after his death by his own actions and presents. This knocks away the spiritual basis upon which the high position of the first son rests in the Hindu theory. Thus the first son as such has no exclusive or first right of succession in the Jaina Law. This is why a Jaina widow is acknowledged even as a preferential heir to her own son and is given the absolute ownership of the property left by her deceased husband.228
Further, a Jaina widow, after acquiring the property of her husband, has more or less absolute and unrestricted power of enjoyment and disposition of that property. It has been stated that for her own maintenance as well as for making expenditure towards religious purposes and for the purposes of her community a widow has power to spend her husband's wealth and also to sell his property.229 She is at liberty to give her inherited property to any one she likes and cannot be stopped by any one except as regards the maintenance of small children. The son is left to amuse himself any way he pleases. This peculiarity of the Jaina Law is calculated to have a wonderful effect on the community. The son has got to please the mother, if he is to get anything from the paternal or maternal estate; for she excludes him from inheritance altogether except as an heir to herself. She is further empowered to make a a will, and may also dispose of her property, by nontestamentary gifts, in her life-time. The son has, thus, got to think for himself, and learn how to earn, and to acquire pleasing manners, to captivate
