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SOCIAL HISTORY
only of himself but also of his parents. And what is further noteworthy is that this Kshatriya
donee Rājyadharavarman, seems to have been a particularly holy man as the Gāhaḍavāla
king issued no less than six charters to him,-a thing unprecedented in the field of epigraphy.
We have now to consider the fifth question that arises out of the mention of the gōtras and
clans specified in the two copper plate charters of the daughter of Chandragupta II. Let us,
in the first place, recapitulate what we have discussed so far. We have seen that she calls
herself Prabhāvatiguptā and that her mother is described as Kubēra-Nāgā. As the latter is
further described as having sprung from the Nāga family, there can be no doubt that the
post-fix Nāgā is the feminine form of Nāga, the name of the clan to which she belonged. For the
same reason we have to take Guptā of Prabhāvatiguptā as the name of the clan to which
she pertained. But she was married into the Vākāṭaka family which was decidedly a Brāhmaṇa
family and bore the Brāhmaṇa gōtra Vishṇuvṛiddha. The Guptas never had any Brāhmaṇa
gōtra before or after they rose to power. We have found so many inscriptions of them, but no
Brāhmaṇa gōtra is found coupled with the name of any one of them. But there is hardly any
record of the Vākāṭaka kings where their Brāhmaṇa gōtra, Vishṇuvṛiddha, is not specified.
Their clan names were already different, namely Gupta and Vākāṭaka.
That was enough to
enable one clan to marry into the other, just as Kubēra-Nāgā was married to Chandragupta.
But as Prabhāvatiguptā was being wedded to a Vākāṭaka king of the Brāhmaṇa caste, the
Guptas, it seems, had to adopt a Brāhmaṇa gōtra, namely, Dhāraṇa, which had different
pravaras from those of Vishṇuvṛiddha. This was probably to raise themselves to the dignity of a
Brāhmaṇa family and legalise the marriage even from the Brahmanic point of view, by bringing about matrimonial alliance not only in two different clans but also in two different Brāhmaṇa gōtras. In fact, it was on account of mixed marriages, anulōma and pratilōma, that the
Kshatriya families were forced to retain or assume Brāhmaṇa gōtras. Those who had the ārsha
pravaras handed down from generation to generation certainly retained them. The mention of
Rājyadharavarman as a grantee in Jayachchandra’s plates is in instance in point, showing
that some Kshatriya families retained such pravaras till the twelfth century A.D. But those
Kshatriya families which had no ārsha gōtras attached to them had to assume them for matrimonial purposes to start with and borrowed them apparently from their Purōhitas. To sum up,
mixed marriages, like anulōma and pratilōma, were known right up to the time of Chandragupta II,
that is, up to the commencement of the fifth century A.D., that consequently the metronymics, coined out of Brāhmaṇa gōtra or Kshatriya clan names, were prevalent up to the Gupta
period, but that except among the Rājpūts these metronymics have now gone completely out
of vogue, especially in the Brāhmaṇa caste, where a girl is believed to be merged into the
gōtra of her husband soon after her marriage. Thus the fifth question that we have to consider
here is: when did the custom arise of a girl being absorbed into the gōtra of her husband?
It is very doubtful whether this custom is Aryan at all. As a matter of fact, it is not supported
by any one of the earlier Smṛitis, such as Manu, and Yājñavalkya, and Nārada and Vishṇu. Gautama
Dharmasūtra (IV. 2) says: a-samāna-pravarair=vivāhaḥ. Yājñvalkya-smṛiti lays down (I. 53)
that a man should marry a girl who is a-samān-ārsha-gōtrajā, “born in a gōtra which
has dissimilar Pravaras (ārshas).” If the Aryans were so particular about avoiding marriage
with a girl who has the same gōtra, how can they admit a girl into the gōtra of her husband
after a marriage. In fact, Bōdhāyana asserts that sa-gōtrāṁ gatvā Chāndrāyaṇam charēt, “one
shall perform (the penance of) Chāndrāyaṇa, having intercourse with a girl of the same gōtra.”
It thus seems well nigh impossible according to the Aryan custom that a girl after marriage
could be merged into the gōtra of her husband as he thereby committed an incest and would
have to perform the expiatory penance. Nevertheless, the Aryan custom, foisted upon the
marriage system of India, was gradually losing ground and being replaced by the pre-Aryan
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