Niyoga was an ancient tradition in India that stretched back to the hoary past. According to its tenets, a woman married to a man who was incapable of fathering a child could request another man to impregnate her. Usually, she would turn to a rishi. For one, the intellectual prowess of the rishi could pass on, genetically, to the offspring. More importantly, rishis were wandering mendicants and would not lay claim to the child. A child born of a union sanctioned by niyoga would, for all practical and societal purposes, be the legitimate child of the woman and her legal husband; the biological
...more
