Talk:Gautam Brahmin

Modification
The article is modified, reformatted and new inputs from different other verifiable reference sources are added. Lomasha (talk) 18:36, 21 July 2012 (UTC)Lomasha(Lomash_g)

-

Expanding & modifying the article "Gautam Brahmins" and archiving the old material
(1)	New relevant pieces of information are added, (2)	A few lines of information such as, regarding Indrabhuti and Siddhartha are deleted because they are not of much relevance to this article. Rather, these paragraphs were added to the article “Gautam (given name)”, where they seem to be appropriate. (3)	Some redundant references are deleted, (4)	Some pieces of information are rearranged and reshuffled to make the article more lucid.

Besides, I would also archive the old material of this talk page. Lomasha (talk) 20:08, 18 September 2012 (UTC) Lomasha (Lomash_g) Lomasha (talk) 20:14, 18 September 2012 (UTC)(Lomash_g) -

Response to the reader (223.191.130.50)feedback
Dear Reader(223.191.130.50),

The article “Gautam Brahmins” is written with an intent to provide general information with a broader scope on those Brahmins, who affiliate either with Gautam gotra and/or with Gautam Dharmasūtra and generally identify themselves with the last name Gautam. The article doesn’t have a purpose to cater information on a very specific or narrower ambit, such as Gautam Brahmins of a specific city, district or region of India.

Therefore, an overview on different characteristic affiliations for describing a Brahmin, is furnished.

As mentioned in the article, the sub-groups and sub-castes of Brahmins are generally classified on the basis of either their affiliations or the geographical regions they are located in. Hence, Gautam Brahmins is a culturally heterogeneous group of different sub-castes of those Brahmins, who follow the above-mentioned affiliations.

Under the section “Distribution” of the article, the various geographical regions of India are cited where the possible settlement of Gautam Brahmins may be found.

If “Madhubani Gautam” refers to the Maithili group Brahmins settled in Madhubani, Bihar and who assume the last name ‘’Gautam’’ primarily because of their affiliation with Gautam gotra, then their general reference is already mentioned. Since Brahmins, who affiliate with Gautam gotra, are spread over a large extent in many districts and regions of India, it is not possible to incorporate the information on Gautam Brahmins of each specific local/regional area in a single article.

Therefore, I would request the interested persons to conduct some research, collect, analyze facts, and then translate them into a Wikipedia article on “Gautam Brahmins of local/regional area” of their interest. Then put a link at the appropriate place of the main article on “Gautam Brahmins”.

Lomash_g LomashaLomasha (talk) 19:47, 20 October 2012 (UTC) -

Response to the reader (117.203.176.225) feedback
The Sanskrit word, written in Devanāgarī script is गौतम (or गोतम), as appeared in various ancient Sanskrit works, such as Vedas, Samihtas, Sutras etc., might have come into limelight first during the Vedic age as the name of a descendent of Mahaṛṣi Āngira. During the ancient times (or even in early mediaeval times) when Sanskrit was the main lingua franca of Brahmins, there might not be a confusion due to variation in instances of transliteration of a word.

The original Sanskrit word wriiten in Devanāgarī script as गौतम (or गोतम) could be transliterated as Gautam (or Gotama or Gautama or Gotam or Gauthama etc). It may vary because how the original word is first transliterated to a regional language and then to English.

So, if the reader is referring to the same word and is talking about the gotras of Brahmins, then one possible argument could be that –

If the said gotra “Gotam” is written as गौतम (or गोतम) in Devanāgarī script, then it is merely a variation in transliteartion.

Lomash_g LomashaLomasha (talk) 19:10, 24 January 2013 (UTC) --

Response to the reader (2001:4c28:194:520:5e26:aff:fefe) feedback
The message (so called feedback) is totally inappropriate to the subject matter of the article.

(1) How would the author (or any other genuine contributor to this article) know about all Hindu castes/communities?

(2) How would the author (and others) know the gotras (or clan names) of all Hindu castes/communities or more specifically the gotra (or clan name) of the Maity community?

(3) The article “Gautam Brahmins” provides information on those Brahmins, who affiliate either with Gautam gotra and/or with Gautam Dharmasūtra and generally identify themselves with the last name Gautam. It summarizes different characteristic affiliations of a Brahmin, etymological description of the name Gautam, the naming patterns of Brahmins and possible places of settlement of Gautam Brahmins. How can one look for the gotra (or clan name) of the Maity community in the article “Gautam Brahmins”? Doesn’t it merely show the person’s height of common sense? Furthermore, the person is providing a feedback that he/she did not find what he/she was looking for.

The reader must first learn how to search a depository of literary documents or records for a piece of information.

Lomash_g Lomasha Lomasha (talk) 19:15, 24 January 2013 (UTC) --

Undid revision 600461758 by Humugu
- "Brahmin's gotra system" is explained in a separate article of the same name. - The rational behind the name "Gautam" considered as an Indian name (whether first or last name) is clearly mentioned in an article associated with "Gotama(or Gautam)" disambiguation as "Gautam (given name), about the name itself" - This article is written with intent to provide general information with a broader scope on those Brahmins, who affiliate either with Gautam gotra and/or with Gautam Dharmasūtra and generally identify themselves with the last name "Gautam".

Therefore, it's better to associate this article with the category "Brahmin communities" than to associate it with the categories mentioned earlier in the first two points. Lomasha (talk) 08:21, 21 March 2014 (UTC) Lomash_g --

Undid revision 603143028 by 116.202.67.180
(1) "Brahmin's gotra system" is explained in a separate Wikipedia article of the same name. (2) This article is written with intent to provide general information with a broader scope on those Brahmins, who affiliate either with Gautam gotra and/or with Gautam Dharmasūtra and generally identify themselves with the last name "Gautam".

The title of this article is “Gautam Brahmins”, not “Gautam Gotra”, therefore, it's better to associate this article with the category "Brahmin communities" than to associate it with the Brahmin gotras.

Secondly, the editor should understand that the act of editing/ deleting an original article/ page done from an unregistered account/ IP and without providing any authentic reference support could be considered as fiddling, whether intentional or unintentional, and could be qualified as a candidate for vandalism. Lomasha (talk) 14:05, 8 April 2014 (UTC) (Lomash_g) --

Response to the editor (Naved2015)
First, I would like to make it clear that the article “Gautam Brahmins” is written with an intent to provide general information with a broader scope on those Brahmins, who affiliate either with Gautam gotra and/ or with Gautam Dharmasūtra and generally identify themselves with the last name Gautam. The article does not have a purpose to cater information on a very specific or narrower ambit, for example, to provide information on individuals (I do have respect for each individual but I am sorry about this!) and/ or to furnish facts on any specific location (each specific district, city, town or village in India) where these Brahmins are settled.

Second, the editor should have read the article seriously and understood the objective and central idea of each section and paragraph of the article. Without having an idea of the purpose and meaning of a paragraph, one should not insert a sentence (or delete a senetence), just out of his impulse, into the concerned paragraph.

The very first sentence of each article conveys a concise explanation of the meaning of the title of the page. The editing done is meaningless and does not add any weightage to the definition.

For your kind information, Tiwari, Raut, Purohit are not gotras. They are Vipra-śāsana or alla (Hindi: अल्ल) titles. Gaur is one of the groups of Brahmins, based on their geographical classification. To place each gotra or vipra-śāsana associated with Gautam Brahmins is not the objective of this article. Interested person may get the information related to gotras, śākhās, vedas and prime devatas affiliated with Gautam Brahmins of Brij region on the website www.gautamrishi.com.

The following inserted senetence – “(5) of Saken ke tiwari,purohit ,gohiliya,magheriya,gaud,raut etc gotra are of Gautam Brahmins .” is totally out of context. The concerned paragraph provides the examples of how Gautam Brahmins could be identified with their full affiliation (i.e., (1) Gotra, (2) Pravara, (3) Sūtra, and (4) Śākhā.)

I would therefore, request the editors/ contributors to read the article thoroughly and understand its gist. If they think, they have some extra but related matter to contribute then only go ahead. Please spare yourself from adding the out of context matter and the matter related to individual location or person.

Moreover, the editor should understand that the act of editing/ deleting an original article/ page just out of his/ her whim, done from an unregistered account/ IP and without providing any authentic reference support could be considered as fiddling, whether intentional or unintentional, and could be qualified as a candidate for vandalism.

Lomasha (talk) 14:36, 26 July 2015 (UTC) (Lomash_g) --

Response to vandals @ Roy sikh, @ Gotitbro and @ 2409:4063:4397:16bd:1cbd:28bc:149c:174
According to an article “Hinduism by country” in Wikipedia, approximately 1.35 billion people worldwide (approximately 15-16% of the world's total population) follow Hinduism. According to the reports published in 2007 in “Outlook India”, about five percent of the total population of India are Brahmins. Moreover, Brahmins is the only single caste, which is found across the whole India – from Kashmir to Kerala and Assam to Gujarat. Rest of the other individual castes are either confined to a localized region or at the most restricted to a few states.

The name Gautam came into limelight first during the Vedic period (approximately 1000BCE – 1500BCE) and was credited to the great sage Deerghatamas, a descendant of Mahrishi Āngira. “Gautam” is one of the root gotras (initial chief gotrs based on Seven Rishis) of Brahmins and “Gautam Dharmasutra Gautama Dharmasūtra” is the oldest and one of the prominent Dharma sutras initiated by a Vedic sage Kareṇupāli of Gautam lineage. However, it was revised a few times later by other sages of the same lineage. So obviously, many Brahmins affiliate themselves with the “Gautam gotra” and/ or with “Gautam Dharma sutra” across the whole of India. And following the now established naming convention of , some of these Brahmins living in different parts of India also write “Gautam” as their last name.

On the other hand, according to the “World population review”, there are approximately 535 million people around the world practice Buddhism, which would represent little more than 8% of the world's total population. These followers are mostly found in the Tibet region of China, Myanmar, Kampuchea, Laos and Vietnam and they have been following Buddhism for last many centuries. None of these original & traditional Buddhists (including the ones in India) bear the last name as “Gautam”. Why? Because they know that Buddha (Siddhartha, the founder of Buddhism) was born in a Kṣatriya caste and he was simply called “Gautama” to perpetuate the name of his foster mother Gautami for the love she bestowed on him. His family name was “Shakya”. Besides this, during the times of Buddha, the concept of naming convention was not as the .

According to the 2011 Census of India, Buddhists make up 0.7% of India's population, or 8.4 million individuals. Again according to the 2011 Census of India, traditional Buddhists are less than 13% and Neo-Buddhists (Scheduled caste people converted to Buddhism) comprise more than 87% of the Indian Buddhist community, i.e. approximately 0.61% of India's total population. Out of these 0.61% neo-Buddhists, people writing the last name “Gautam” would be hardly approximately 0.0061%.

More surprisingly, if a person relinquishes his religion (say, Hinduism) and adopts a new religion (say, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism etc.,), he should not be considered as a person belonging to any caste. Because caste system is a very particular phenomenon of Hindu culture and it is not supposed to be reflected in any other religion. Therefore, such a person should not be entitled to have & avail privileges granted to the rest of the poor scheduled caste community. In other words, such a person should not sail on two boats simultaneously by enjoying (and claiming) the benefits provided to the downtrodden communities in India and side by side claiming to be a member of the newly adopted religious group. It seems like a few of the scheduled caste people, especially after 1990, were instigated by some frustrated & green-eyed mentality people (could be related to some political/ social/ cultural organizations/ institutions!) to give up their original last name and to write “Gautam” as their last name after converting to Buddhism.

Gautam as a last name is not, however, the explicit copyright of a particular community. But on the same analogy, neither any of these last names are the copyrights of the representing communities (a few last names popular among different communities across various regions of India are being mentioned as examples) –

Sharma, Bharadwaj, Kashyap, Vashsitha, Bhargava, Atreya, Kaushik, Mishra, Tiwari, Tripathi, Dixit, Shukla, Chaturvedi, Dwivedi, Pandey, Jha, Iyer, Iyengar, Mukherjee, Chatterjee, Banerjee, Mahapatra, Dave, …, Rathore, Chauhan, Parihar, Sisodiya, Bhadouria, …, Agarwal, Gupta, Goyal, Bansal, Rastogti, Gandhi, Shah, Modi, …,  Shrivastava, Saxena, Mathur, Sinha,  ..., Kapur, Malhotra, Chopra, Bhatia, Arora, Kohli, …, Siddhu, Sodhi, Tomar, Patel, Patil, Pawar, Naidu, Reddy, Menon, Nair, …, Soni, Yadav, Katiyar, Gangwar, Bhati, Bhainsla, Khati,  ... and so on.

(Note: These last names are not mentioned in any sort of hierarchy, rather the names have been written impromptu.) People of different communities of Hindu culture bear thousands of last names (or surnames) by convention characterizing various traditional reasons. They (especially North Indians) have started having the last names since Europeans have introduced and propagated the naming system as the  for their convenience.

But unfortunately, for a last few decades a few persons pertaining to totally different communities have started writing the conventional last names of another community. For example, some people of totally different communities have started writing the last names from the above mentioned list of last names representing specific communities. They think they would get a lot of respect and acceptability among other communities by such an act. And the meanest of them try to pour their frustrations out by crying and vandalizing.

Historically, each community/ caste within the fold of Vedic/ Sanatan Dharma used to follow any one of the Dharamsutras/ Dharamsashtras originated within this fold. So each community/ caste used to and has been following the affiliation of gotra system, that is very specific to that community/ caste. For example, what gotra system Vaishya community/ caste affiliates with is totally different from the gotra system of the Kayastha community/ caste.

Unfortunately, scheduled caste people were the exceptions. They have been out of the fold of Vedic/ Sanatan Dharma because they never followed or accepted the one of the Dharamsutras/ Dharamsashtras of the Vedic/ Sanatan Dharma fold. That’s why, they didn’t have their own gotra system.

I don’t know whether you 3 guys, who tried to infringe & vandalize these articles a few times, hail from the schedule caste community. But I still feel that either you have been instigated with prejudices by some other persons or you are from some other caste/ community (non- scheduled castes) and have inborn prejudices against Brahmins (especially non-Punjabi) having Gautam as last name.

Well, I would just advise you guys instead of pouring out your frustrations due to your rotten historical, sociological or religious knowledge and ingrained prejudices, do some service at a Gurudwara for a couple of months so that the God and Wahe Guru! would bestow some kind of peace, humility and good sense on you! Lomasha (talk) 19:20, 20 February 2022 (UTC) --