More than 400 Gothras
and their Pravara Rishis
Compiled by
P.R.Ramachander
(I understand a young boy
after upanayanam went to
meet Head of Sringeri Mutt recently with his father. When the chanted “Abhivadaye”, the swamiji
asked him for his pravara .He said, he does not know .Then the SWamiji
asked his father for his pravara.To his
shock , even the father did not know..)
Gothras among
Brahmins is considered as a patrilineal lineage.
It is believed
that all Gothras among Brahmins
originate from Seven sages viz.
1.Viswamithra ,
2.Jamadagni
3.Bharadwaja ,
4.Gowthama ,
5.Athri
6.Vasishta
7.Kasyapa
8, Agasthya
The entire
population of Brahmins according to
our present belief is the paternal progeny of their sons .The Word Gothra means “A place where cows are tied” . It is well known that
the wealth of people in the Vedic period was measured by
the cows that were possessed by him. So
there is a theory that these
great sages used to maintain huge number of cattle in their hermitages and had large number of people in their
hermitages to assist them. So possibly
the Gothras that we refer
may be the families of all the
people living in the hermitage of a great saint .(It is
interesting to note that there are
Pravara(most eminent) rishis ,Different Gothras have 1-5 pravara rishis associated with them,) The
need for this type of thinking is
because as at present same Gothra people follow
several Vedas , Several Grihya Suthras , belong to several sub
castes and several regions in India . Apart from that the population of people belonging
to different Gothras vary widely. For example among Tamil Brahmins the number
of people following the
Bharadwaja Gothra are about 25% of the
population and the people belonging to Agasthya gothra is very less .Another important
fact is that There is a kaushika
Gothra and a Viswamithra Gothra. The sages indicated by
these name is the same sage .I have read
some where that Kaushika Gothra was started
by the sage when he was a Kshatriya and Viswamithra Gothra was
started after he became a Brahmin.Still
more perplexing thing is that Lord Hanuman
according to a prayer addressed to him belongs to Kaundinya
Gothra though nowhere it is mentioned that he is a Brahimn by birth. Ravana is the son of a sage is born to a sage and Rakshasi and I have not come across any Gothra
for him.
IT is interesting to note that “In the court case Madhavrao vs Raghavendrarao which involved a Deshastha Brahmin
couple, the definition of gotra as descending from eight sages and then
branching out to several families was thrown out by the Bombay High Court. The
court called the idea of Brahmin families descending from an unbroken line of
common ancestors as indicated by the names of their respective gothras
"impossible to accept." The court consulted relevant Hindu texts and
stressed the need for Hindu society and law to keep up with the times, emphasizing
that notions of good social behavior and the general ideology of the Hindu
society had changed. The court also said that the mass of material in the Hindu
texts is so vast and full of contradictions that it is almost an impossible
task to reduce it to order and coherence.”
Number of more
than 400 Brahmin gothras along with Pravara Rishis
Wikipedia on list of
Gothras mentions that there are 46
Gothras among Brahmins.Familypedia gives a list of 136 Gothras, Sri Ramanan has compiled
names of about 56 gothras m The world
library gives a list of 100
gothras and I have come across
a list of 51 Gothras earlier.
So I was taken aback to see
in a book in tamil published by Smt.Uma Hariharan, which has
been approved by Kanchi Kamakoti mutt , a list of 421 Gothras . The list is classified as
1.Gothras with
one Pravara rishi
19
2, Gothras with two
pravara rishis 15
3, Gothras with three
pravara rishis 313
4.Digothras with
three pravara rishis
23
4.Gothras with
five pravara rishis
51
In this list there are
several Gothras which are
repeated several times with different Pravaras and some gothras are repeated
in different of these classes also
I am giving the complete list as given in the book and you can see
them all in
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