Gender roles differed sharply by social status. Among ordinary peo- ple, women did at least their full share of work. Visitors ranging from Chinese in the fifteenth century to French and Persians in the seven- teenth, and Englishmen in the nineteenth, noted that the women do most of the work in Siam. Some attributed this to the corvée system which removed men from the household for up to half the year. Through most of the Chaophraya basin, rural households gave equal weight to their maternal and paternal bloodlines, and partitioned inheritance equally among male and female children. In the spirit religions which existed alongside Buddhism, many of the ritual specialists were women. In Khun chang khun phaen, an early epic which originated from oral tradition, the women have strong characters, clear economic functions, and considerable independence But among royalty and nobility, women were treated as assets. Patri archs accumulated wives in order to augment the lineage. Families deployed daughters to build dynastic connections. In law, a woman was always the property of a man first, of her father, then of her husband marriage law was like a deed of sale from father to husband), and pos sibly of an owner if she were sold into slavery. Court poetry portrayed women as objects of beauty and devices in the plot, but not as agents with