8/12/2019 Jackson & Chakraborty Family Blog_ Understanding the Bengali Kulin Brahmin Caste

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Random musings from the fam-damily of Jackson-Chakraborty's for our friends, family and our children. The rest of the world is welcome too!

ackson & chakraborty family blog

Thursday, March 15, 2012

I am posting this so that someday Tara and Kaya have somewhere to look up their maternal heritage. Of course being only half Kulin Brahmin makesyou not Kulin (pun intended) at all, nevertheless. Also after having this explained to me I now begin to understand those old bengali movies where apretty young thing of a girl is forced into marriage to an old doddering man with one foot in the grave, promptly to be followed by the torturous life ofa widow at age 15 on! O f course, re-marriage w as never allowed for women. joys of being s Kulin Brahmin girl must have been few ot her than theprestige and education made available at a younger age which was equal by few others.

I am to ld I am of Sanyal (Vatsav/Vatsya) decent on my father's side whose last name is Chakraborty and on my mothers paternal side I am a Maitra(Kashyap) from Bangladesh and on her maternal side I am a Roy, so a Rarhi Brahmin.

Since we are paternalistic society that makes me a Rarhi Brahmin (east Bengal) of Vatsya (pronounced Bot-so) G otra. Well thank god f or modernity,no one cares that I married a Canadian!

so here it is, the Kulin Brahmin system explained...

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kulin Brahmins are those Brahmins in Bengal who can trace themselves to the five families of Kanauj (Kanyakubja), Uttar Pradesh who migrated toBengal. They were given immense power during the reign of the Sena/Sen kings who were staunch Hindus and did not encourage the practice of anyother religion. The five brahmin families were differentiated by t heir gotras. The Kanaujiya/kanyakubj brahmins who settled in Bengal had t he followinggotras: (Shandilya, Bhardwaj, Kashyap, Swavarna and Vatsav/Vatsya); these gotras denote the Rishis whose followers t he brahmins were.

Some of these kuleen families settled in Barendrabhoom and some in Rarhbhoom in what is present day Bangladesh. The descendants of thesefamilies became known as Rarhi and Barendra brahmins as per their settlement.

The common surnames of Rarhi brahmin family are (ranked equally):

Mukherjee / Mukhopadhyay (Bharadwaja)

Banerjee / Bandyopadhyay (Shandilya)

Chatterjee / Chattopadhyay (Kashyap)

G anguly / Gangopadhyay(Shavarna)

Khanna / (khan)

The common surnames of Barendra brahmin family are (ranked equally):

Sanyal (Vatsav/Vatsya)

Lahiri (Shandilya)

Bagchi (Shandilya)

Moitra (Kashyap)

Understanding the Bengali Kulin Brahmin Caste

Tara and Kaya my beautiful and fortunate little half breeds!They are hiding out under the couch in this picture as Kaya learns to scooch backwards.

Kulin Brahmins

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Apart fr om these many others like Chakroborty, Bhattacharya, Ray/Roy, Roy Choudhury, Ma jumdar, etc. , which are, indeed, titles conferred oncertain privileged families from among the above mentioned surnames, could also be Kulin if they are Rarhi Brahmins. Khan and Chowdhury are titlesawarded to many kuleen brahmin families because of t heir ancestral rule or profession.

The connection between the saraswat brahmins and kanaujiya/kanyakubj brahmins is this that during the Aryan migration the saraswat brahmins,called thus because they lived along the banks of the river saraswati, which began to disappear underground during Parushurama's time. Thesebrahmins migrated to south, north and northwestern parts of the subcontinent.

Gaud Saraswat Brahmins The kashmiri pandits are of the same lineage as these saraswats and consider themselves to be pure Aryan because theirdescendants didn't mingle with the indigenous people. Those that set tled in north India also went to what is present day Uttar P radesh, whereKannauj is located From here they migrated to G aud or Gour. From Gour, a small community comprising about seven families migrated t o the Southof the subcontinent.They were known as Gaud Saraswat Brahmins.

Kulin Pratha (Kulin System) was initiated by the Sena kings in Bengal whereby the kings gave land and power to t he Brahmins to promote vedicprinciples in the society, leading to a strict and disciplined lifestyle. Simultaneously they also enforced strict rules on family and marriage rules onBrahmins, leading to the birth of Kulin Brahmins, an apex section/class/caste of the society. It wa s said that a person is Kulin if and only if all t he 14generations on his father's a nd mother's side were Kulin. This created a very problematic divide in the society. This was also opposed by manyBrahmins. Yet it became a norm, probably because the k ulin Brahmins got lured by t he newly acquired power in t he society.

Kulin Pratha was a very strict practice leading to many problems in Bengali society. If a daughter of a Kulin family doesn't wed in a Kulin family thenthe parent fa mily loses their Kulin identity. These led to several problems like young girls getting married to old Kulin married men out of d esperationof finding a Kulin groom. It was not uncommon for Kulin grooms to have several wives, most of which stayed at their parents home, just to be wed(for the sake of the ritual) to a Kulin and hence maintain their Kulin status.

Nowadays many Brahmins have shunned their Kulin identity and have mixed equally with all the Brahmins and non Brahmins in Bengal and other partsof India. It is hard to state the current stand of these f amilies on Kulin Pratha. It may surface during the marriage process, but the young are notconcerned.

Marriages and gotras

Marriages within the gotra ("swagotr a" marriages) are banned under the rule of exogamy in the traditional matrimonial system. People within thegotra are regarded as kin and marrying such a person would be thought of as incest.

A much more common characteristic of south Indian Hindu society is permission for marriage between cross-cousins (children of brother and sister).Thus, a man is allowed to marry his maternal uncle's daughter or his paternal aunt's daughter, but is not a llowed to marry his father's brother'sdaughter. She would be considered a parallel cousin who is treated as a sister.

According to strict Hindu tradition, the ter m gotra is used only for the lineages of Brahmin, Kshatriya and Vaishya varnas. Brahminical Gotra relatesdirectly to the original seven "saptarishis" Rishis of the Vedas. Later, the t erm "gotra" was associated with broader meanings of any lineage, Brahminor otherwise.

A common mistake is to consider gotra to be synonymous with clan or kula. A kula is basically a set of people following similar cultural rituals, oftenworshipping the same God (the Kula-Devata - the God of the clan). Kula has nothing to do with lineage or caste. In f act, it is possible to changeone's kula, based on one's faith or Ishta-deva.

It is common practice in preparation for Hindu marriage to inquire about the Kula-Gotra (meaning Clan-Lineage) of the bride and bridegroom bef oreapproving the marriage. I n almost all Hindu families, marriages within the same gotra are prohibited, since people with same got ra are considered tobe siblings. But marriage within the kula is allowed and even preferred.

Posted by Tina at 11:55 PM Labels: bengali , bengali kulin brahmin , brahmin , caste , gotra , kashyap , Kaya , kulin, maitra , roy, sanyal , Tara , vatsya

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7 comments:

Tina June 4, 2013 at 11:17 PM

This seems to be one of my most visited posts. I wonder if the traffic wanders in for matrimonial research?

Reply

Sampan July 21, 2013 at 12:56 PM

Came here searching for something but nice work because me being a Kulin Brahmin(originally Ganguly but got Chakrabort-my grandfathergot it fromZaminder).But Imust tell you that renaissance of Bengal happened because of these Kulin Brahmins started by RammohanRoy(originally Bannerjee.

Even today most of our intellectuals are coming from these Brahmin communityalong with Vaidya-Brahmin community.

WE were discussing it in a blog-Indian/Chinese IQ puzzle where average IQ of Indian Hindu is 86 but Kulin Bengali Brahmin with115-122,more than Ashkenazi Jewish.Considering our tiny population we are producing more laurels in USA compared to AshkenaziwithPulitzer winners,one of the greate st Biologist and inventor Anandamohan Chakraborty,A.Bannerjee(Nobel laureate signature awardwinner),inventors etc.Even Tagore or IVF pioneer Subhas Mukherjee came from Kulin Brahmin sect.

Nice article.

Reply

Tina July 22, 2013 at 3:05 PM

Sampan, though I understand your pride in belonging to t he kulin caste, I have to say that the high IQ and the genesis of the bengalirenaissance at the hands of Kulin men, all have a direct relation to their access to education over the generations. Other castes were nevergiven the opportunity for an education and thus they never developed a culture of learning. Even today MO ST Brahmins fall in the category ofeducated middle class as opposed to industrialists or farmers or military.

Reply

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