Which among the following rules about gotra are correct:
(A) Women were expected to give up their father's gotra and adopt that of their husband on marriage.
(B) Members of the same gotra could marry.
(C) Members of the same gotra could not marry.
(D) Women were expected to retain their father's gotra and not adopt that of their husband on marriage.
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → (A) and (C) only
(A) Women were expected to give up their father’s gotra and adopt that of their husband on marriage. Correct. This was the first of the two important rules about gotra in the Brahmanical practice.
(B) Members of the same gotra could marry. Incorrect. Everyone in a gotra was regarded as a descendant of the same Vedic seer, so members of the same gotra could not marry.
(C) Members of the same gotra could not marry. Correct. This was the second important rule.
(D) Women were expected to retain their father’s gotra and not adopt that of their husband on marriage. Incorrect. The rule was the reverse: a woman was expected to give up her father’s gotra and take her husband’s.
NCERT (2026-27): “2.4 The gotra of women … 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. One way to find out whether this was commonly followed is to consider the names of men and women, which were sometimes derived from gotra names.…” |