jputs, however, and one or two other military
castes, as the Marathas and Lodhis, do not have the small exogamous
clans (which probably, as has been seen, represented the persons
who lived together in a village), but large ones. Thus the Rajputs
were divided into thirty-six royal races, and theoretically all these
should have been exogamous, marrying with each other. Each great clan
was afterwards, as a rule, split into a number of branches, and it is
probable that these became exogamous; while in cases where a community
of Rajputs have settled on the land and become ordinary cultivators,
they have developed into an endogamous subcaste containing small
clans of the ordinary type. It seems likely that the Rajput clan
originally consisted of those who followed the chief to battle and
fought together, and hence considered themselves to be related. This
was, as a matter of fact, the case. Colonel Tod states that the great
Rathor clan, who said that they could muster a hundred thousand swords,
spoke of themselves as the sons of one father. The members of the
Scotch clans considered themselves related in the same manner, and
they were probably of similar character to the Rajput clans. [177]
I do not know, however, that there is any definite evidence as to
the exogamy of the Scotch clans, which would have disappeared with
their conversion to Christianity. The original Rajput clan may perhaps
have lived round the chiefs castle or headquarters and been supported
by the produce of his private fief or demesne. The regular Brahman
_gotras_ are also few in number, possibly because they were limited
by the paucity of eponymous saints of the first rank. The word _gotra_
means a stall or cow-pen, and would thus originally signify those who
lived together in one place like a herd of cattle. But the _gotras_
are now exceedingly large, the same ones being found in most or all of
the Brahman subcastes, and it is believed that they do not regulate
marriage as a rule. Sometimes ordinary surnames have taken the place
of clan names, and persons with the same surname consider themselves
related and do not marry. But usually Brahmans prohibit marriage
between Sapindas or persons related to each other within seven degrees
from a common ancestor. The word Sapinda signifies those who partake
together of the _pindas_ or funeral cakes offered to the dead. The
Sapindas are also a man's heirs in the absence of closer relations;
the group of the Sapindas