Why Bharadwajs are so numerous

This morning I was at the faculty lounge at IIMB, drinking coffee and conversing with a few professors. Soon, the discussion moved to Bharadwaj gotra and related stuff. And something a professor (who is a Bharadwaj) said explained very well as to why the gotra is so prolific.

So he said that the Bharadwaj ashram was quite well known in its ancient times for the quality of its food. Another professor related an anecdote about how Rama, on his flight back from Lanka made a detour to eat at the Bharadwaj ashram, even as his subjects back in Ayodhya were waiting fervently for him. Food at the Bharadwaj ashram was so good, he said.

Now there are two ways in which this explains why Bharadwajs are so numerous. Firstly, the quality of the food in the ashram meant that Bharadwaj’s children and grandchildren and other descendants were all very well fed. Now, considering that these were times much before the industrial revolution and there was generally a shortage of food, this meant that infant and child mortality rates were generally high. But not in the Bharadwaj ashram, thanks to the food there!

So that meant that the Bharadwajs grew up fitter and healthier than descendants of other rishis, and thus lived longer and were able to procreate more. The bullwhip effect caused due to enhanced longevity and fitness of the early Bharadwajs has resulted in the proliferation of Bharadwajs today.

The other explanation is that the superior quality of food at the Bharadwaj ashram attracted more people into the ashram, and these people would yearn to become part of the “family” (I’ll spare you the gory details here). That meant that Bharadwaj and his immediate male descendants had much more access to furthering their lineage compared to competing gotras. And hence you have so many Bharadwajs today.

In fact we might have had several more Bharadwajs but for the fact that the gotra system is designed such that no one gotra ever gets to big. That two people from the same gotra are not allowed to marry each other naturally keeps the size of a particular gotra in check.

Let’s say for example that more than half the Brahmins were Bharadwajs. Considering that a Bharadwaj can only marry a non-Bharadwaj, that would leave a number of Bharadwajs being unable to marry, which means that the number of Bharadwajs in the next generation would be lower!

It is interesting, though, that everything can be explained through food!

3 thoughts on “Why Bharadwajs are so numerous”

  1. One could study the numerous Br?hma?a Va???val?-s published across India. I have two Saray?p?r??a Br?hma?a Va???val?-s with me, and have seen the K?nyakubja Va???val?-s too. If one can compile the Va???val?-s for all Pañcagau?a and Pañcadr?vi?a, and then take the current population of the villages listed by Gotra, one can get a noisy estimate of the split by Gotra. The Gotra split in UP may be decisive. Assuming 5% of all of India’s population is Br?hma?a-s, and 9% of UP’s population is Br?hma?a-s (numbers cited commonly), and using the fact that around 16.5% of India’s population is in UP, UP Br?hma?a-s make up 30% of India’s Br?hma?a population. While I do not have any statistics, my guess is V?si??ha-s and Gautama-s outnumber Bh?radv?ja-s among Saray?p?r??a-s.

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