CDS (II) 2022 General Knowledge · Question 115 of 120

Correct — D, Stridhana was not inherited by the children without the permission of the husband. This inverts the rule. The smriti tradition holds that a woman's marriage gifts were hers, that her children inherited them, and that the husband had no claim on them at all — the standard schoolbook formulation is that stridhana 'could be inherited by their children, without the husband having any claim on it'. The option turns that independence into a permission the husband grants, which is the opposite of what the texts say. The other three statements are all sound, and read together they describe a coherent scheme: the paternal estate passes down the male line, women are excluded from a share in it, and stridhana is the narrow but genuinely separate category of property that remains a woman's own.

• (a)The paternal estate was to be divided equally amongst sons. — Correct as stated. The tradition divides the paternal property on the death of the parents, with a special share for the eldest, and women could not claim a share of it. One printed detail is worth a footnote rather than a mark: current editions of the standard school text render this as divided amongst the children, where earlier printings said sons. The option follows the older wording, and either way it is not the false statement here.
• (b)Women were allowed to retain the gifts they received on the occasion of their marriage. — Correct as stated. This retention is the whole point of the category — the one form of wealth a woman kept as her own even though she took no share of the paternal estate.
• (c)The gifts to women on the occasion of their marriage were known as Stridhana. — Correct as stated. Stridhana translates literally as a woman's wealth, and it is the term the texts use for exactly these gifts.

Smriti literature — the Dharmasutras and Dharmashastras, of which the Manusmriti is the best known — sets out rules on marriage, inheritance, occupation and social duty. Its rules are prescriptive rather than descriptive: they record what the compilers thought ought to happen, not necessarily what did. On property they draw a sharp line. Land, cattle and money passed through men; a daughter or wife did not inherit a share of the patrimony; and the exception carved out for women was stridhana, the gifts made at marriage, which stayed with her and went to her children.

The item is a not-correct question on a four-line summary, so the trick is to find the statement whose direction has been reversed rather than to weigh degrees of truth. Three options describe stridhana as an autonomous form of women's property; the fourth quietly makes it conditional on a man's consent, and that reversal is the whole question. Beyond the answer, keep the historian's caution that the standard textbook itself attaches: the cumulative evidence, epigraphic as well as textual, suggests that while upper-class women could hold resources — the Vakataka queen Prabhavati Gupta is the usual example — land, cattle and money were generally controlled by men. Legal texts describe an ideal; inscriptions describe practice; and social difference between men and women was sharpened precisely by this unequal access to resources.

• Under the smriti tradition the paternal property was divided after the death of the parents, with a special share for the eldest, and women could not claim a share of it.
• Stridhana, literally a woman's wealth, means the gifts a woman received at her marriage.
• Stridhana could be inherited by her children, and the husband had no claim on it.
• The Manusmriti, compiled roughly between 200 BCE and 200 CE, is the best known of these texts.
• Epigraphic and textual evidence together suggests that land, cattle and money were generally controlled by men, whatever the texts allowed.

• Reading stridhana as anything a woman happened to possess; the texts define it narrowly as the marriage gifts.
• Taking the smriti rules as a description of how families actually behaved rather than as prescription.
• Assuming the husband controlled stridhana — the texts deny him a claim on it.

As a not-correct item on a short list of rules, or through a source-based question quoting a passage on inheritance and asking what it implies.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In the smriti tradition, the term stridhana refers to

  • (a)A woman's share of the paternal estate
  • (b)The gifts a woman received on the occasion of her marriage
  • (c)Land granted to a temple by a queen
  • (d)The maintenance paid to a widow by her husband's brothers

  Answer(b) The gifts a woman received on the occasion of her marriage — literally a woman's wealth, retained by her and inherited by her children.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Prabhavati Gupta, often cited in discussions of women and resources in early India, was associated with which dynasty by marriage?

  • (a)The Satavahanas
  • (b)The Vakatakas
  • (c)The Kushanas
  • (d)The Pallavas

  Answer(b) The Vakatakas — a Gupta princess who married into the Vakataka house and issued land grants in her own name.