India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c12.s5.7

c12.s5.7

The *kula* basis of the tribes appears to be vitally connected with a number of Pāṇinian *sūtras* dealing with *gotrāpatya* and *yuvan* descendants. Apart from those names which were Ṛishi *gotras* Pāṇini also includes a number of tribal names in the lists dealt with in the *Gotrāpatya* chapter. For example, in the very first *sūtra* (IV.1.98) Kuñja and Bradhna were not names of Ṛishi *gotras* but of Vrātas, a class of rudimentary *Saṅghas* of the *Āyudhajīvī* pattern (V.3.113). The need for distinguishing the *gotra*-descendant from the *yuvan*-descendants should be understood clearly. In fact in the social as well as the political sphere, the family was the unit of representation, which was exercised through the head of each family, called *Kula-Vṛiddha* (Śāntiparva, 107.27). In grammatical literature, Pāṇini refers to him as *Vṛiddha*, which was a pre-Pāṇinian term for *Gotra* (*Vṛiddha-śabdaḥ pūrvāchārya-saṁjñā gotrasya*, *Kāśikā*; also Patañjali, I.248 on *sūtra* I.2.68; Kātyāyana IV.1.90.5). Pāṇini in his grammar substituted *Vṛiddha* mostly by *Gotra*, stating that all the descendants of an ancestor in a family except the son of the founder were called *Gotra* (*Apatyaṁ*