Ancient Indian Historical Tradition c21.9

c21.9

So far as tradition indicates, the ancient rishis kept practically no genealogies. Brahmanical books contain lists of the rishis through whom certain teaching was handed down (p. 4), but no lists of natural descents. Spiritual pedigrees exist, natural pedigrees are wanting. It was one of the duties of the sūtas (p. 15) to preserve the genealogies of rishis as well as of kings, and presumably they observed it as far as they were able, but the task must have been well-nigh impossible, inasmuch as the rishis generally dwelt in secluded hermitages, many of their descendants were of no note, their relations and families were not matters of public interest and report, and their gotras multiplied unmanageably. Rishi genealogies could never have been as copious as the dynastic genealogies; certainly, if they ever were so, they were not transmitted so sedulously, for they do not exist now.