Marriage in Same Gotra

There is a popular misconception about gotra, namely people of the same gotra share an ancestry originating from some legendary sage (rishi) in the distant Vedic times. In fact, the gotras are eponymous after those same sages.

People belonging to the same gotra are therefore supposed to be extended family, and a marriage within the same gotra is deemed to be incestuous. But the whole idea is precisely that - a misconception. It does not explain why:

1) People from different castes are nominally affiliated to the same gotra. If they were of the same extended family, they should also have been of the same caste.

2) People from all castes have gotras. The sages were by definition - and without exception - all brahmins. By that logic, no other caste ought to have a gotra.

3) There is an explicit bypass to the gotra rule. In same gotra marriage cases the bypass allows for the bride to be ceremonially adopted (a token gesture) by the groom's maternal family, which is by definition of a different gotra than that of the groom's family. By doing so, her gotra changes to the one on the groom's maternal side and she can then marry the boy - and of course, by default again revert to her original gotra - the same as that of the groom. If this really was a clan endogamy taboo, such deliberate bypasses would not exist.

So then, what is after all a gotra? The word actually comes from gau atra. The word "gau" means a cow - or cows. In the Vedic times, disciples of a rishi would pay tribute to the master by giving cow(s) to him - a valuable resource in the pastoral and agrarian community of those times. So all those who gave cows to the same rishi were classified as notional brothers. It has no linkage at all to clan, kinship or actually family blood ties. A notional brother may be treated similarly to a real one under prevailing social ethos, but remains quite different from the POV of marriage alliances ties.

In any case, it is quite impossible to establish at this point in time as to which individuals of a gotra may originally have had shared kindhip ties in those distant times and which did not. Given the venerable ancestry of the custom and the sheer number of generations that have passed since then, the distinction is also entirely academic in present times. Ergo, the gotra taboo is no more than a mindless and meaningless custom that simply carries on in ignorance.

One last point. While I know that Quora officially allows anonymous asking, answering and commenting, I have never used the feature because I disagree in principle other than for very exceptional circumstances. I also avoid answering Anon questions because I have done so in the past, where the OP went into a dispute and there was no way to discuss rationally without knowing anything about the person. You are therefore requested that if you send me an A2A again, kindly do so under your true identity.

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