Matriliny in Andhra Pradesh - IV

During the 'shaving of head' ceremony of year old babies, in some of the temples in Andhra Pradesh, it is the maternal uncle who acts as guardian of the child in the rituals and not the father.

I wonder if that has something to do with the lapsed matrilineal tradition of this region.

Matriliny in Andhra Pradesh -III

It appears many Art historians have concluded that seemingly metronymics of Satavahana/Ikshvaku kings are in fact Gotra names. (Via Indo-Eurasian_research, Yahoo Groups).

Matriliny in Andhra Pradesh -II

In my previous post, I proved that there was no matrilineal tradition in Andhra Pradesh by considering the names of Ikshwaku kings and their mothers. In this post, I am questioning the conclusions of that post considering Satavahana kings and their mothers.

I stumbled upon this website while searching for some information on potters. According to that website;

-> Goutamiputra Satakarni's mother's name, Goutami Balasri.
-> His son Vasistiputra Pulomayi's mother's name, Vasisti.

Now the question is if that really indicates matrilineal tradition. None of the kings before Satakarni followed that naming convention. I hope the information given in that website is correct. Of course, I do understand that Satavahanas' Dravidian credentials are not very strong.

Matriliny in Andhra Pradesh

The otherday, I visited Nagarjunakonda. Some people have speculated that matrilineal system was in vogue in old Andhra society. Generally, Satavahanas, were speculated being matrilineal because of their names. Many Satavahana king names have affixes that sound like "son of (female name)". I bought a book, Nagarjunakonda, compiled by Archaeological Survey of India. The book was completely silent about any matrilineal traditions. But I found a few interesting facts in the book.

- Goutamiputra (son of Goutami), Vasishtiputra(son of Vasishti), Mathariputra(son of Mathari), Haritiputra (son of Hariti) were used multiple times and by Satavahana, Ikshvaku(looks like Sanskritization) and Abhira kings.
- But there was no correlation between mother's names of individual rulers and these titles. For example (kings belonging to Ikshvaku dynasty);
* Vasishtiputra Ehuvala Chantamula's mother's name was Bhattidevi
* Vasishtiputra Rudrapurushadatta's (Ehuvala's son) mother's name was Vammabhatta
* Haritiputra Virapurushadatta's (Ehuvala's son) mother's name was Kapanashri

From those examples we can clearly see that not only there is no connection with mother and the title but sons of the same father also do not inherit the similar titles(or first names). If we masculinise those names then we can make an interesting observation.

Vasishti -> Vasishta; Goutami-> Goutama; Hariti -> Harita; Mathari -> Mathara

And Vasishta, Goutama, Harita and Mathara were sages or law givers. These also represent Brahmin Gotra names. I think in old days it was a practice for the kings to take up the gotra of their Brahmin guru.

So these names have nothing to do with matriliny. Probably, that must be some weird way of representing their gotras as gotra represent descendancy from that particular sage.