What was the significance of gotras in Brahmanical practice?

They linked individuals to Vedic seers as descendants.

The correct answer is Option 3 - They linked individuals to Vedic seers as descendants.

One Brahmanical practice, evident from c. 1000 BCE onwards, was to classify people (especially Brahmanas) in terms of gotras. Each gotra was named after a Vedic seer, and all those who belonged to the same gotra were regarded as his descendants. Two rules about gotra were particularly important: women were expected to give up their father’s gotra and adopt that of their husband on marriage and members of the same gotra could not marry.