GOTRA SYSTEM , Y CHROMOSOME , DNA , GENETIC BIRTH DEFECTS
Since it was a Sunday, the street was fairly deserted. Pretty soon a guy came from the opposite direction , and it appeared that he was indeed searching frantically for his purse, his eyes darting here and there on the ground.
So we asked him “ Have you lost something?”
He said ” Yes, my purse is missing from my back pocket”
Immediately a Bawajee ( an old Parsee gentleman ) within earshot started imploring at the top of his voice “ Maine nahi liya! Maine nahi liya!—Mai—“ in a shrill squeaky voice.
I took out the purse and gave it to the rightful owner and then all the three of us tried to convince the Bawajee , that the purse is indeed found, and that nobody has accused him of stealing it.
To be frank, we spent the next 5 minutes calming this hyper venting old man, that he is NOT involved at all, the purse has been found and all is fine..
For a minute we thought he would collapse and die, and then we would be charged for man slaughter, if we were NOT lynched by a mob . The sentiment on the street would be " Aree bhaiya, bichara Bawajee ko kyun tangh kiya?"
For a minute we thought he would collapse and die, and then we would be charged for man slaughter, if we were NOT lynched by a mob . The sentiment on the street would be " Aree bhaiya, bichara Bawajee ko kyun tangh kiya?"
For everybody in India knows of the Parsi inbreeding genetic brith defect problem , which rears its ugly head once they have crossed 40. Till the age of 25, the Parsi girls are so lovely and the men firm limbed and level headed.
This episode shook us so badly that we decided to have a chilled beer. My friend could NOT help giggling , and asked me if the old guy was mad.
I told him “ It was just his Y chromosome playing up"
To put it in layman's language "same gotra marriages" within a VERY SMALL community.
To put it in layman's language "same gotra marriages" within a VERY SMALL community.
Parsis , a small community which migrated from Iran to India in 950 AD , are guilty of marrying within themselves. They marry their close relatives . If they marry outside they are ex-communicated and they lose their free perks from their trust having deep pockets.
A portion of what I told him 3.5 decades ago , will now be reproduced in this post.
In recent past , brown noser Hindu ministers ( to curry favour with a Hindu hating WTE—waitress turned empress , ) have found it necessary to condemn all Indian traditional systems like Gotra system as nonsense.
These same ministers would declare in parliament that Gotra system, Hindu horoscopes and Astrology is all nonsense. But when it comes to their own daughters and sons , they have NOT neglected the Gotra and horoscope system .
In my own case, my parents matched 77 horoscopes , before the 78th horoscope ( of my wife- lucky gal!! ) matched. I am from matrilineal Kerala where we do NOT have the Gotra system. So I don’t have an axe to grind, being a neutral person.
But I will explain the amazing science behind this. This ancient Vedic science became clear only a few decades ago with progress in science in DNA research.
It is amazing that 7000 years ago, the Vedic Maharishis, in all their wisdom knew of the Y chromosome. The Gotra system was designed to track down the root Y Chromosome of a person quite easily.
Gotra means cowshed in Sanskrit. The Gotra system was started among Brahmins, which was a system to classify and identify the families in the community.
When it comes to handing down Vedic knowledge verbally, from 9000 BC to 5000 BC, this is most important. The Vedas were written in 5000 BC.
The Gotra are descents from ‘Saptarishi’, meaning 7 sages. The seven sages are Agastya, Angirasa, Atri, Kashyapa, Bhrigu, Vasistha, and Bharadwaja.
Much later Kshatriyas and Vaishya’s jumped into this system, to be one up above the Shudras, and they subverted the Gotra requirements.
This was induced by the British Christian invader – to alienate the vast majority of low caste Shudras and drive fissures into Hinduism with the assistance of false gods like BR Ambedkar and Periyar EV Ramaswamy , who declared that British rule is better than self rule..
The issue of same Gotra marriages is a hot topic recently. Several organisations which includes Khap Panchayats of Haryana, Delhi, Rajasthan and U.P are demanding that Hindu Marriage Act should be amended to ban marriages between the same Gotra. Gujjars, Rajputs, Banias, Brahmins and Punjabis strongly opposes the same Gotra marriages
India now has 1300 million people. Khap panchayats are raising this issue in a violent manner , to maintain their relevance and sustain their eroding supremacy. More than 250 Gotra chains have been explicitly listed.
We have Muslims and Christians keeping track of their Gotras . They want to claim superiority over lesser mortals in their new found religion, and have the best of both worlds. It is more of a social issue now.
India now has 1300 million people. Khap panchayats are raising this issue in a violent manner , to maintain their relevance and sustain their eroding supremacy. More than 250 Gotra chains have been explicitly listed.
The Khaps are carried away by the visuals of their Murrah Buffalos. Murrah buffalo, the pride of Haryana is the result of hybridzation . Jet black in colour, sometimes with white markings on face or legs, these male bulls weigh 800 kilos of prime beef. The females give fantastic amounts of milk around 35 litres.
We have Muslims and Christians keeping track of their Gotras . They want to claim superiority over lesser mortals in their new found religion, and have the best of both worlds. It is more of a social issue now.
Some Buddhists to claim divine lineage and superiority, give unsolicited declarations of their Gowthama Gotra. Buddha, was a Hindu by the name of Siddhartha . His Y-chromosomes is from Rig-Vedic Rishi 'Gowthama Rahoogana'. Selfishness propels them to claim all this. Buddha lived in 1900 BC. Considering 4 generations per century, a lot of water has flown down the Ganges. These people do NOT even know the birth and death dates of Buddha. They claim he was born in 563 BC, a date arbitrarily written by lying British historians over brandy and cigars.
They claim that boys and girls of the same Gotra are like brothers and sisters and marriage between them can produce off springs with birth defects. The Delhi High Court, Punjab and Haryana High Courts have rejected the petitions demanding ban between the same Gotra marriages stating that there is no such provision in the statuette book.
The pseudo Hindu ministers in the coterie of WTE non-believers have referred to 'Gothra' as archaic, unscientific, irrelevant and male chauvinistic!
Oh yeah?
Modern DNA science have seconded what our ancient seers have written down in all their wisdom.
Like I said before in Kerala we do NOT have gotra system.
In a nut shell it is as flows.
Lord Parashurama came down to Kerala with a bunch of Brahmins in 4000 BC, when the river Saraswati dried up. On the way some of them decided to settle down at river Zuari of Goa. Lord Parashurama was very pro-brahmin and he hated the warrior caste. He himself was a warrior saint.
Ask anybody from Kerala “ Why did the creator of Kerala Parashurama throw his axe? “ – and if the guy or gal cannot answer this simple question then she or he is NOT a Malayali. The answer you will get is “ He threw his axe to reclaim land from the Arabian sea”.
The real thing is he used his axe power to snatch the land off rightful owners and donate the whole plains of Kerala to Namoodiri Brahmins. Kerala is a very narrow strip of land between the sea and the Western Ghat mountain range.
In those days Kerala had two clans. Malayyars , who lived on the mountains ( and are still there ) and Thirayyars who lived on the plains and did sea navigation.. Well the Thirayyars lost their lands.
The Namboodiris wanted to keep this newly acquired land for themselves without giving it away. They created a bizarre social nay sex system to sustain this diabolical greed for land. They literally painted themselves into a corner. Today they are responsible for their own object condition and lack of numbers
The patron saint of the Kerala Thirayyars is Rishi Therayar , the first disciple of Maharishi Agastya . Agastya , the greatest of the Sapt Rishis, also famous as the first of the Siddhas , who also founded the Kalari Payattu art of fighting.
The Namboodiris wanted to keep this newly acquired land for themselves without giving it away. They created a bizarre social nay sex system to sustain this diabolical greed for land. They literally painted themselves into a corner. Today they are responsible for their own object condition and lack of numbers
Only the eldest Namboodiri son would marry. Rest will just screw around with all the attractive women they see, called “SAMBANDHAM” (sexual liason ).
All lower caste woman had to expose their breast in public, and the Nair watchdogs enforced it under fear of losing both breasts at the sharp edge of their swords.. All this is NOT allowed as per the Vedas, as the noble seers were NOT racists
All lower caste woman had to expose their breast in public, and the Nair watchdogs enforced it under fear of losing both breasts at the sharp edge of their swords.. All this is NOT allowed as per the Vedas, as the noble seers were NOT racists
Later this type of sexual anarchy was more organized. Their offsprings with NIL claim to their father became a separate Kshatriya clan , called the Nair clan.
This clan was inclusive of the current Menon, Nambiar, Pillai, Kurup, Adiyodi, Asan, Eradi, Kaimal, Kartha, Nayanar, Nayars, Menoki, Achan, Thampi, Vellodi, Panickar, Unnithan etc..
They would carry swords all the time and take care of the feudal overlords with excess loyaly , to get a piece of the spoils. Namboodiris would now only attempt to have sex with their own home production – the Nair clan. The Nair clan of course between themselves.
They created Kerala’s matriarchal system. Nair women were truly bohemian. While the Nair men went for the battles, all the ladies lived in their respective Tharavadu or ancestral bungalow. There would be a Karunavar guardian, a senior uncle who would stay with them ladies .
There was no concept of marriage in the Nair clan. When a Nair man meets an woman who caught his beady eye he hands over a pudava (a cotton garment or mundu) and he is invited to her house. While the man spends the days in his own house, the night is spent with this lady in her house having sex. He left at dawn after a bath.
The Nair man had zilch commitments to her and when he walks out, it’s up to ze lady if she wants to wait for him or find another suitor. If the same suitor returns after the battle, and finds another pair of footwear outside the house, then that means she has allowed a new man in.
And he goes away with or without a heartache. This system brought full security to women as they called the shots and were never displaced from their houses. The man enters their life and exits at her sweet will. The man has to adopt to her ways and make life work according to her system or she will put her pretty foot down or connect it on his martial ass — sword or no sword.
In South India where there is NO gotra, Hindu Hindu society allowed marriage to maternal uncle’s daughter, or paternal aunt’s daughter. But marriage to father’s brother’s daughter was not allowed, as they belonged to the same gotra in the patrilineal society.
According to modern medical science, an inbred man or women may suffer from as many as 6000 ailments, arising out of genetic disorder linked to consanguineous marriages, starting from physical deformity, micro cephalous, lower IQ, mental retardation to kidney and liver malfunctioning and so on. But the most common diseases are Sickle-cell disease (SCD), or sickle-cell anaemia (SCA) or drepanocytosis sickle beta-plus-thalassaemia
Like I said before, the great seer Rishis of India had created the Gotra system to ensure that inbreeding (which destroys the physical and mental faculties of their descendants) does not occur.
These descendants had to learn Vedas by heart and pass it on for future generations . It was only in 5000 BC that the Vedas changed from oral tradition to written.
Let me stick to the gotra system in Brahmins, to keep things simple. Each gotra takes the name of a famous rishi or sage, who was the patrilineal forebear of the clan. Gotra is a concept of patrilineal classification, which identifies the families of a caste. As the population increased so did the number of gotras.
The original rishis after whom the gotras were named were just eight in number . Gotras were further subdivided into ganas and sub ganas. Another concept is that of Pravar Rishis who were a few of the most learned and capable sages belonging to that gotra. Each Brahmin was thus known by his gotra, pravar, sutra and shakha.
There are exceptions to the rule too. For example the descendents of Maharishis Bhrigu and Angirasa cannot marry, because of the same Pravara Rishis, which are common to the two individuals.
The weddings in India are fixed as per the Gotra of the bride and groom. Gotra matching is one of the most important concerns in North indian Hindu matrimony. Wedding in similar Gotra is strictly prohibited. Hindus are very conservative about the caste system and Gotra.
In the North Indian Hindu society, it is necessary to inquire about the clan and lineage of the bride and groom, before finalizing a wedding alliance. You can check out the matrimonial ads of North Indians and South Indians.
In the North , it is believed that wedding between same Gotra will lead to destruction of the family and clan, and if the bride and groom belong to different Gotras, their alliance will bring down the chances of congenital birth defects through an increase in the frequency of homozygotes. The girl belongs to her father’s Gotra until her wedding, and then becomes member of his Husband’s Gotra after wedding.
Our DNA is packaged into tiny strings called chromosomes. We have a pair of each of our chromosomes, one from mom and one from dad. Before being passed on, the two chromosomes in each pair swap DNA. This is called recombination and it's important for making all of us unique.
But it confuses ancestry tests because it breaks up the patterns. After about five generations, the patterns are in such small chunks that we can't easily trace them anymore. So most of your DNA can only trace your roots back around a hundred years.
The cheaper tests look at DNA that doesn't do much recombining -- the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). You can only trace paternal lines with the Y and only maternal lines with mtDNA. This means these tests miss a whole lot of relatives.
The Y chromosome is a piece of DNA with the genes that tell a baby to be a boy. It is passed from father to son. So, if you have a Y chromosome you know you got it from your dad, and you know he got it from his dad, all the way back in time.
Men have one X chromosome and one Y chromosome while women have two X chromosomes. DNA swapping happens between a pair of chromosomes, and since the Y chromosome doesn't have a pair, it can't swap DNA.
So patterns stick around for a long time, and this was known to our ancient Vedic seers and written down 7000 year ago. Couples have lost their lives and have been ex-communicated for NOT disregarding gotra -- this is how sure the system is.
But what if you're a gal? Then there is another small piece of DNA involved,
Most of the DNA of your body is found in a part of the cell called the nucleus. Dad doesn't pass on his mitochondria, but mom does. So that DNA only comes from your mom, and her mom, and her mom, all the way back.
Just like the Y chromosome, mitochondrial DNA doesn't get scrambled. So that DNA tells where your mom's mom's mom (and so forth) was thousands of years ago. But since most women don't pass on their last names, it's harder to find living relatives using this test.
If you want know where your most recent ancestors came from and get in touch with living relatives, you'll probably need the expensive test that looks at all of your DNA. If you are only interested in your more ancient origins, a cheaper test, either of the Y chromosome or of mtDNA, will give you that information.
In North Indian temples , just to fleece the devotee , especially if he looks well heeled, the priest will make it a point to ask ( taking the offerings ), the votary's Birth Star, Gotra and name , which is ridiculous indeed. The priest repeats the name, the Gotra and the Birth star to complete the process so that they are announced and recorded in ethereal .
In South Indian temples NO priest or panda will try to fleece a person inside the temple. The only correct way to resolve a particular Gotra claim in India is to perform DNA analysis of Y Chromosome in males.
We must not forget that a gotra is nothing but a CLAIMED mythological descent from a Rishi. 7000 years ago, there were very few people in India. In between we were slaves for 800 years , and lot of selfish people who look like adivasis nay monkeys shifted gears .
The gotra system was an attempt by Vedic Maharishis to protect the Y Chromosome from becoming extinct. It was NOT all about conveying the Vedas by oral route alone.
It was to sustain the human race, too.
One ancestory line is the direct female line, that goes through our mother's mother's mother, down which we inherit the mitochondrial DNA inside the X chromosome, that we all have. The other is the direct father-to-father line, down which men inherit the Y chromosome.
Gotra is a family tree whose root can be traced to a common ancestor. Since it is exogamous and patrilineal, it is based only on the the Y chromosome. . A man cannot marry a woman of the same gotra. But a male can marry a woman of the same gotra at least seven degrees removed from his father.
The rule of the Gotra system is that the Gotra of men remains the same, while the Gotra of the woman becomes the Gotra of their husband after marriage. Now suppose a person has only daughters and no sons. In that case his Gotra will end with him in that lineage because his daughters will belong to the Gotras of their husbands after their marriage! This was probably the reason why in the ancient vedic or hindu societies it was preferred to have atleast one son along with any number of daughters, so that the Gotra of the father could continue.
Thus the gotra system has to do with the Y Chromosome alone . Humans have 23 pairs of Chromosomes and in each pair one Chromosome comes from the father and the other comes from the mother. So in all we have 46 Chromosomes in every cell, of which 23 come from the mother and 23 from the father.
Of these 23 pairs, there is one pair called the Sex Chromosomes which decide the gender of the person. During conception, if the resultant cell has XX sex chromosomes then the child will be a girl and if it is XY then the child will be a boy. X chromosome decides the female attributes of a person and Y Chromosome decides the male attributes of a person.
When the initial embryonic cell has XY chromosome, the female attributes get suppressed by the genes in the Y Chromosome and the embryo develops into a male child. Since only men have Y Chromosomes, son always gets his Y Chromosome from his father and the X Chromosome from his mother. On the other hand daughters always get their X Chromosomes, one each from both father and mother.
So the Y Chromosome is always preserved throughout a male lineage (Father – Son - Grandson etc) because a Son always gets it from his father, while the X Chromosome is not preserved in the female lineage (Mother, Daughter, Grand Daughter etc) because it comes from both father and mother.
A mother will pass either her mother’s X Chromosome to her Children or her father’s X Chromosome to her children or a combination of both because of both her X Chromosomes getting mixed (called as Crossover). On the other hand, a Son always gets his father’s Y Chromosome and that too almost intact without any changes because there is no corresponding another Y chromosome in his cells to do any mixing as his combination is XY, while that of females is XX which hence allows for mixing as both are X Chromosomes.
Y Chromosome is the only Chromosome which gets passed down only between the men in a lineage.
Women never get this Y Chromosome in their body. And hence Y Chromosome plays a crucial role in modern genetics in identifying the Genealogy ie male ancestry of a person. And the Gotra system was designed to track down the root Y Chromosome of a person quite easily.
The Y Chromosome is the only Chromosome which does not have a similar pair in the human body. The pair of the Y Chromosome in humans is X Chromosome which is significantly different from Y Chromosome. Even the size of the Y Chromosome is just about one third the size of the X Chromosome. In other words throughout evolution the size of the Y Chromosome has been decreasing and it has lost most of its genes and has been reduced to its current size. Scientists are debating whether Y Chromosome will be able to survive for more than a few million years into the future or whether it will gradually vanish, and if it does so whether it will cause males to become extinct!
Obviously because Y Chromosome is the one which makes a person male or a man. And the reason for all this is that unlike other Chromosomes, there is no way for Y Chromosome to repair itself by doing cross over with its Chromosomal pair. All other Chromosomes come in similar pairs and when there the DNA of one Chromosome gets damaged the cell can repair it by copying over the DNA from the other Chromosome in that pair as both the Chromosomes in all other pairs are almost identical in nature.
This copying (or crossing over as it is called) also allows different combinations of mix and matches to happen between the genes of mother and father and allows the best of the matches to survive and hence make the Chromosomes stronger as they evolve in successive generations. Even X Chromosomes in female undergo this mix and match since there are two X Chromosomes in women.
This copying (or crossing over as it is called) also allows different combinations of mix and matches to happen between the genes of mother and father and allows the best of the matches to survive and hence make the Chromosomes stronger as they evolve in successive generations. Even X Chromosomes in female undergo this mix and match since there are two X Chromosomes in women.
Females have XX chromosomes , and any damage in one X chromosome can be corrected by simply copying the genetic data from the other X chromosome.
Men have XY Chromosomes ! Y Chromosomes do not have any corresponding equivalent Chromosome in its pair. It can exist only in a XY Combination and X cannot mix and match with Y except for a small 5% of X which matches with Y, while the remaining 95% of Y Chromosome which is crucial in the development of a male have absolutely no match at all!. It is this 95% of the Y Chromosome which is completely responsible in humans for creating a male or a man.
Men have XY Chromosomes ! Y Chromosomes do not have any corresponding equivalent Chromosome in its pair. It can exist only in a XY Combination and X cannot mix and match with Y except for a small 5% of X which matches with Y, while the remaining 95% of Y Chromosome which is crucial in the development of a male have absolutely no match at all!. It is this 95% of the Y Chromosome which is completely responsible in humans for creating a male or a man.
But at the same time, Y Chromosome has to depend on itself to repair any of its injuries and for that it has created duplicate copies of its genes within itself. However this does not stop DNA damages in Y Chromosome which escape its local repair process from being propagated into the offspring males. This causes Y Chromosomes to accumulate more and more defects over a prolonged period of evolution and scientists believe that this is what is causing the Y Chromosome to keep losing its weight continuously.
As discussed earlier other Chromosomes do not face this issue because they have corresponding pairs from both the parents and the DNA damage could be easily corrected most of the time by the mix and match process that takes place between the two Chromosomes in a pair. This Chromosomal crossover process eliminates damaged genes and is one of the key processes in evolution of life.
So to summarize, Y Chromosome which is crucial for the creation and evolution of males has a fundamental weakness which is denying it participation in the normal process of evolution via Chromosomal mix and match to create better versions in every successive generation, and this weakness MAY lead to the extinction of Y Chromosome altogether over the next few million years, and if that happens scientists are not sure whether that would cause males to become extinct or not. And that is because Scientists are not sure whether any other Chromosome in the 23 pairs will be able to take over the role of the Y Chromosome or not.
This proves that our Vedic seers had observed the degeneration of the Y Chromosome and they wanted to maintain as many individual healthy unique Y Chromosome lineages as possible.
That would give a fair chance for males to continue to exist because Y Chromosomes get passed on over generations with almost negligible change in their genetic combinations, as they do not take part in mix and match with other Chromosome.
The Maharishis created the Gotra system where they barred marriage between a boy and a girl belonging to the same Gotra no matter how deep the lineage tree was, in a bid to prevent inbreeding and completely eliminate all recessive defective genes from the human DNA.
Manu-smriti states that Hindus should leave 7 generations from the fathers side and 5 generations from the mother side before fixing up a marriage—to preserve the integrity of the Y chromosome.
