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ORIGIN OF BRAHMIN GOTRAS
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viii. 101.15 ‘mother of the Rudras, daughter of the Vasus, sister of the Adityas' yot ncvcr riscs high in the panthcon. In vicw of this rather mixed thcogony, not much can be made of thic phrasc sivas tvasță in thc āpri-hymn v.5.9, for Indra is called śivatama in viii. 96.10. Indra is also ajätasatru (v.34.1 ;viii.93.5), Dhīma in many places, cvcn vişnu in i.61.7 and perhaps rudra in viii. 13.20. That : is, many of the later god-names arc purc adjcctives so that the fact of a god having a good Sanskrit or Indo-Aryan namc docs not necessarily make him a god of the Aryans from his bcginnings. Even the solitary occurrence of lakṣmt (x.21.2) in thc Rgveda is as an adjcctivc.
Thc clumsily patchcd Skanda lcgcnd with its gaping scams is particularly rcvcaling. Without it, we should have assumed, as is done for the modern trimūrti and Dattatrcya, that a multiplc-hcaded god is merely the fusion of that number of malc dcitics, i.c. of thcir cults, Icaving the ancient Brahmi unexplained. But let us first look at the completed patriarchal transformation of such multiple parentage. The introduction of Agni in the Skanda story takcs us only half-way. We have noted that two great gotra-founder rşis with fictitious names, Vasiştha and Agastya (also known as Māna), are born of the combincd sccd of Mitra and Varuna, from a jug or a lotus: two fathers but no mother; this mcthod of gcncration appcars down at least to the siddha Bhartphari, Bharatari or Bhartri of the Kānphäță scct. The essential is the denial of a mother,* these grcat men bcing ayonisambhava, not of woman born. - I suggest that this ingcnious devicc bccamc nccessary because a patriarchal socicty had invaded and conqucrcd by force, but thicse žşis became nevertheless 'originators of gotras. Later the seven sages arc born directly of the four(in some versions cvcn fivc-) hcaded god Brahmi, without female intervention. Yet the names of the 'scven' arc scen to be discordant among the various lists, while the one sage not born of Brahmã at all is kuśika Visvä mitra, thc only truc Aryan gotra-founder. He is rcally a stranger to the seven, even though his book in the Rgveda is pcrmcatcd by Jamadagni influence. Now not only do the scven mothers, the river-goddesses, continuc to hold their high position in thc Rgveda, but the divinc representative of the priesthood, Běhaspati, is scvcral times called scvcn-faced (iv.50.2 ctc ; Sāyaṇa often takes saptāsyas as denoting the Maruts, fathcrcd by Rudra). The conclusion is that a pre-existing matriarchal form of society shows itself through the myth of several mothers jointly giving birth to a god with an equal number of heads or faces. These
* An even better examplc is thc Mandhăts, Icgend. The king is perhaps mentioned in i.112.13, viii.40.2; the word clsewhere in the Rgvcda mcans pious'. In the Mahabharata (3.126) we have his father Yuvanāśva drink cnchanted watcr in Bhrgus's āframa (an inversion of bathing in the enchanted pool), and so become pregnant, the son bcing ultimately born through his side and (in thc vulgate Drohaparvan 62) sucklcd on Indra's finger. This is a complctc repudiation of maternity, as with the couvadc. Mbh.3.127 'has rationalization, by reversal, of the many mothers, Jantu is born jointly of king Somaka's hundred wives, then sacrificed in a yajia, by which cach of the hundred mothers conceives a complctc son. (cf. Kathāsaritsagara 13.57-05). The Southern recension substitutes jyesthāyām samajāyata for strišale samajāyala, rationalizing still furthcr.
