When, without making provision for the maintenance of his wife and sons, any person embraces ascetism, he shall be punished with the first amercement; likewise any person who converts a woman to ascetism. Whoever has passed the age of copulation may become an ascetic only after distributing the properties of his own acquisition (among his sons); otherwise, he will be punished.
—Kautilya, in the Arthaśāstra, 2.1:29-31
