Indian Epigraphy c16.s2.50

c16.s2.50

The custom of mentioning royal and private personages with metronymics like *Gautamīputra*, ‘the son of a lady whose paternal *gotra* is Gautama’, was popular in the early centuries of the Christian era especially in the southern areas of the country. The purpose was to distinguish a person from his step-brothers and a king also from his predecessors bearing the same name. It has to be noticed that some popular forms of marriage in ancient India did not involve *gotra-antara* or the change of the wife’s paternal *gotra* to that of her husband. At a later date, such a metronymic was conventionally applied to all the members of a ruling family. Thus the Kadambas of Banavasi and the Cālukya kings of Badami claimed to have been *Hārītiputras*.¹ The practice of mentioning metronymics went out of fashion in the early medieval period. But from this time the popularity of mentioning a man’s name jointly with that of his father began to increase in the southern areas of the country. Thus the Early Cālukya king Kīrtivarman II seems to be mentioned in an inscription² as Vikramāditya-Kīrtivarman, i.e. Kīrtivarman II the son of Vikramāditya II.