[1][2][3] The basic purpose of niyoga is to ensure the continuation of the family lineage and to mitigate the financial and social precariousness that a childless widow would have faced in society.
[7] The Niyoga system, which enabled a woman to choose and invite a male with the desirable seed, and bear children.
[12] Niyoga or Levirate which Apastamba declares as unfit for practice in a degenerate later age or Manu's repudiation of widow-remarriage as unsupported by Vedic hymeneal Mantras or the text purporting to be Baudhayana's cited in the Smrti-candrika.
[13] When in almost the same breath the smrti indicates an institution like niyoga (levirate), and the conditions which should govern its application, and also condemns it as an "animal practice" (paśu-dharma), Manusmriti, IX, 59-63 and IX, 64-69, the juxta-position of apparently opposed views should be treated not as an instance of inconsistency, or carelessness in composition, or of interpolation, but, as explained by Brhaspati, as an indication of applicability and inapplicability to different time-cycles or yugas.
[14] The Haihaya (Kalachuri) ruler Raja Raj Singh (c. 1689–1712) begot a son through niyoga on the advice of his Brahmin councilors.