even if he happens to be possessed of sons and grandsons and even if he counts a hundred years, looks like a child of but two years of age.  Able or disabled, lean or robust, the son is always protected by the mother.  None else, according to the ordinance, is the son’s protector.  Then doth the son become old, then doth he become stricken with grief, then doth the world look empty in his eyes, when he becomes deprived of his mother.  There is no shelter (protection against the sun) like the mother.  There is no refuge like the mother.  There is no defence like the mother.  There is no one so dear as the mother.  For having borne him in her womb the mother is the son’s Dhatri.  For having been the chief cause of his birth, she is his Janani.  For having nursed his young limbs into growth, she is called Amva.  For bringing forth a child possessed of courage she is called Virasu.  For nursing and looking after the son she is called Sura.  The mother is one’s own body.  What rational man is there that would slay his mother, to whose care alone it is due that his own head did not lie on the street-side like a dry gourd?  When husband and wife unite themselves for procreation, the desire cherished with respect to the (unborn) son are cherished by both, but in respect of their fruition more depends upon the mother than on the sire.[1206] The mother knows the family in which the son is born and the father who has begotten him.  From the moment of conception the mother begins to show affection to her child and takes delight in her. (For this reason, the son should behave equally towards her).  On the other hand, the scriptures declare that the offspring belongs to the father alone.  If men, after accepting the hands of wives in marriage and pledging themselves to earn religious merit without being dissociated from them, seek congress with other people’s wives, they then cease to be worthy of respect.[1207] The husband, because he supports the wife, is called Bhartri, and, because he protects her, he is on that account called Pati.  When these two functions disappear from him, he ceases to be both Bhartri and Pati.[1208] Then again woman can commit no fault.  It is man only that commits faults.  By perpetrating an act of adultery, the man only becomes stained with guilt.[1209] It has been said that the husband is the highest object with the wife and the highest deity to her.  My mother gave up her sacred person to one that came to her in the form and guise of her husband.  Women can commit no fault.  It is man who becomes stained with fault.  Indeed, in consequence of the natural weakness of the sex as displayed in every act, and their liability to solicitation, women cannot be regarded as offenders.  Then again the sinfulness (in this case) is evident of Indra himself who (by acting in the way he did) caused the recollection of the request that had been made to him in days of yore by woman (when a third part of the sin of Brahmanicide of which Indra himself was guilty