[Advaita-l] On sagotra Marriages

[V Subrahmanian]

On Sun, Jun 19, 2011 at 10:04 PM, Rajaram Venkataramani <
rajaramvenk at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> From the word itself. sagotra as you know means same lineage. In
> brahminical Tamil, we use sagotharan and sagothari to indicate brother and
> sister respectively.
>

The amarakosha gives these synonyms:

सहजः, सगर्भ्यः, समानोदर्यः, सोदर्य: (all in masculine).  This means: born
along with/ from the same womb.

In the Apte Dictionary for the word सह + उदरः (सहोदरः) the meaning is: A
uterine brother.

For the word: सोदर it is  ’born from the same womb'. सोदरा is a uterine
sister.

For सोदर्यः the meaning is 'A co-uterine brother', brother of whole blood..

In Kannada they refer to a maternal uncle (mAma) as सोदरमाव and for a
paternal aunt (athai) सोदरत्ते.

I think 'sodarI' / ’sahodari' in the feminine form too is admissible in
Sanskrit /Telugu to refer to a sister as we find in Shyama Sastri's
compositions: श्यामकृष्णसोदरि गौरि...

In the famous kRti: हिमगिरितनये हेमलते ..there is the usage: सामसहोदरि..
I have also heard of the usage: भिन्नोदर...to refer to a half-brother.

The Tamil usage you have shown is only the 'corrupt' form of 'सहोदर/रि’ and
does not refer to the 'gothra'.

Regards,
subrahmanian.v