The Hindu law of adoption provides an exemplary case of the interaction of religion and law in traditional Indic discourse. According to classical Hindu jurisprudence, there are two reasons behind an adoption. The first, a religious reason, ensures that a man will receive the ancestral offering called śrāddha after his death. The adoptee offers the śrāddha which sustains a man in the afterlife and, without which, his soul may potentially be lost forever (Derrett 1977: 40-1). The second motive for an adoption, a legal one, is to provide an heir for a family's property.

These two motives are by no means unique to the Hindu tradition as both form part of a common pattern in many parts of the Eurasian world up to the modern period (Goody 1976). Evidence from Rome, Greece, and China suggests that issues surrounding both inheritance and ancestral rites were at the heart of adoption. Neither Jewish law nor Islamic law, by contrast, accept adoption in a fully legal sense and both thus serve as useful contrasts. In both the latter systems, however, fosterage or guardianship was permitted without any change in the legal status of the child. The comparative approach to adoption reveals the important, though often elided, difference between adoption and fosterage, the latter being a more precise term for the charitable acceptance of orphans, whether or not they be also legally adopted.