Note 168 — Volume II. (continued 2)

Brâhmanic exogamy. 10. The great sub-castes already named are for the most part endogamous; but the rule appears to be occasionally relaxed when the scantiness of brides in the small local group is an obstacle to marriage. Thus there seems to be no doubt that in parts of the country at least the Gaur and Saraswata sub-castes intermarry. According to Manu persons are forbidden to marry who stand in the relationship of sapindas, that is, who are within five degrees of affinity on the side of the mother, and seven on that of the father. The person himself constitutes one of these degrees; that is to say, two persons stand to each other in the sapinda relationship if their common ancestor, being a male, is not further removed from either of them than six degrees, or four degrees when the common ancestor is a female. This rule reinforces the principle that the gotra is an exogamous unit. It is needless to say that this gotra system has been developed to an extraordinary extent, and they have become so numerous that it is practically impossible to procure any well established list of the gotras of any of the chief tribes. The word gotra means primarily a “cow-pen,” and has hence been extended to the descendants of a common ancestor. Most of them are what has been called eponymous, that is to say, they claim to be descended from and to derive their names from some Rishi, or saint, who is supposed to have been their first ancestor. All the Brâhmanical gotras have eight great ancestors only—Visvamitra, Jamadagni, Bharadwâja, Gautama, Atri, Vasishtha, Kasyapa, and Agastya.168 These occupy with the Brâhmans about the same position as the twelve sons of Jacob with the Jews, and only he whose descent from one of these great Rishis was beyond doubt could become the founder of a gotra. The Brâhmanical system of gotras has, again, by a fiction been extended to other tribes, such as the Râjput, Banya, Khatri, or Kâyasth, but among them the institution is exotic, and naturally much less vigorous than among the tribe from whom it was derived.