UPSC CAPF AC 2018 Paper

For early societies, historians can retrieve information about elite families fairly easily. Historians often use textual traditions to understand these processes. Some texts lay down norms of social behaviour; others describe and occasionally comment on a wide range of social situations and practices. For example, though the central story of Mahabharata is about two sets of warring cousins, the text also contains sections laying down norms of behaviour for various social groups.The historians can also catch a glimpse of some social actors from inscriptions.It is, however, far more difficult to reconstruct the familial relationships of ordinary people. Historians also investigate and analyse attitudes towards family and kinship.
Satavahana Inscriptions generally end with the term Putra, a Prakrit word meaning “son.” The term Gotami-puta means “son of Gotami”. Names like Gotami and Vasithi are feminine forms of Gotama and Vasistha, Vedic seers after whom gotras were named.