Caste in India: The Facts and the System c6.s3.26

c6.s3.26

The *gotra* denotes an eponymous group which is reputed to descend in its entirety from a common ancestor, who should properly be a *rishi*, a legendary priest or saint. The number of these is limited, so that the same *gotras* are to be met with, however abnormal this arrangement may appear to us, amongst people who belong to different castes. The *gotra* is peculiar to the Brahmanic caste. It is true that we find it extended to the other high castes by religious law, to the Kshatriyas and Vaiśyas, but at the price of obvious artifices.³ Brahmanic *rishis* can hardly in strict logic have been able to found any but Brahman stock. It is as frivolous to attribute to families the *gotra* of their priests and religious preceptors, who are necessarily of different orders, as to include all the families who do not know their *gotra* in that which recognizes Jamadagni as its founder. In fact, the Brahmans are alone in the somewhat general possession of *gotras*.¹ But a more or less faithful imitation of the institution and even of its name, has been transplanted into a great number of castes, especially amongst the merchant classes, who pride themselves on conforming to the Brahmanic rule.² The name has travelled so far afield that in many cases it has ended by assuming a meaning very distant from its primitive one, a fact from which considerable confusion has resulted, even in the census returns.