Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c11.s4.22

c11.s4.22

Gotras. Somewhat akin to the institutions of *Śākhā*, *Charaṇa*, and *Parishad* is that of the *Gotra* or *Kula* which means a family depending on a real or imaginary community of blood and may exist among all the three castes. The *Charaṇas*, confined only to the Brāhmins, depend, as we have seen, not on the community of blood but on the community of sacred texts and were thus *ideal* fellowships held together by ties more sacred than the mere ties of blood. Hence members of different *Gotras* might belong to the same *Charaṇa*, the new *Charaṇa* might bear the name of its founder, and thus become synonymous, but not identical, with a *Gotra*. The names of the *Charaṇas* were naturally preserved as long as the texts which they embodied continued to be studied. The names of the *Gotras* were liable to confusion in later times when their number became too large, but the sacred works preserve the genealogical lists for Brahmins which, considering the respect they pay to their ancestors, may be taken to present a correct account of the priestly families of India. All Brahmin families are supposed to have descended from the seven Ṛishis, viz. Bhṛigu, Aṅgiras, Viśvāmitra, Vasishṭha, Kāśyapa, Atri, Agastya, but the real ancestors are the following eight, viz. Jamadagni, Gautama, Bharadvāja, Viśvāmitra, Vasishṭha, Kāśyapa, Atri, Agastya. The eight *Gotras* descending from these Ṛishis are again subdivided into forty-nine *Gotras* and these forty-nine branch off again into a still larger number of families. The names *Gotra*, *Vaṁśa*, *Varga*, *Paksha*, and *Gaṇa* are all used in the same sense to express the larger as well as the smaller families descended from the eight Ṛishis. A Brahmin, who keeps the sacrificial fire, is obliged by law to know to which of the forty-nine *Gotras* his own family belongs, and, in consecrating his own fire, he must invoke the ancestors who founded the *Gotra* to which he belongs. This invitation or invocation of the ancestors came to be called *Pravara*. Each of the forty-nine *Gotras* claims one or two or three or five ancestors, and the names of these ancestors constitute the distinctive character of each *Gotra*. Lists of these are to be found in the Kalpa-Sūtra works. Their reality is, to some extent, borne out by the fact that they have an important practical bearing upon the two essential ceremonies of Brahmanic society, viz. marriage and consecration of sacrificial fires.