All are Sapindas who offer the cake to the same ancestors.
Four generations share in the cake-offering.
The head of the family would himself offer or share with all his descendants in the offering of the one cake to his great-grandfather, his grandfather, and his father. And if this passage is taken in conjunction with the one quoted just above, the number sharing in the cake-offering, limited as in the text at the seventh person from the first ancestor who receives the cake, is just sufficient to include the great-grandson of the head of the family, supposed to be making the offering.
The group, thus sharing the same cake-offering, would in the natural course be moving continually downwards, generation by generation as the head of the family died, thereby causing the great-grandfather to pass from the receivers of the cake-offering to the receivers of the water libation, and admitting the great-grandson's son into the number of Sapindas who shared the cake-offering. And at no time would more than four generations have a share in the same cake offered to the three nearest ancestors of the head of the family.
Similar grouping of the pourers of the water libation.
The Samānodakas, or pourers of the water libation appear to have been similarly grouped.
“Ignorance of birth and name” was in Wales considered to be equivalent to beyond fifth cousins. According to the Gwentian Code, “there is no proper name in kin further than that”—i.e. fifth cousins.[139] And this tallies exactly with the previous quotation from Manu limiting the water libation to [pg 054] three generations of ancestors beyond those to whom the cake is due, which, as has been seen, includes fifth cousins.
And it must be borne in mind that fifth cousins are great-grandsons of the great-grandsons of their common ancestor, or two generations of groups of second cousins.
The οἶκος includes four generations.
It was extremely improbable that a man would see further than his great-grandchildren born to him before his death. And it might also occasionally occur in times of war or invasion that a man's sons and grandsons might go out to serve as soldiers, leaving the old man and his young great-grandchildren at home.