Kasana Gotra

What “Gotra” means for the Gujjar

Gujjar writers and the surveys they quote call the clan a gotra, also written got, and describe it as the clan (jat) that sits above the lineage and the household. The gotra regulates marriage: Gujjars keep gotra exogamy, and Hindu, Sikh and Muslim Gujjars share the same gotra names.

Name and Origin

I found no source that gives the meaning of the name Kasana. Accounts of its origin differ. A Gujjar community history site says that Campbell, Bhagwan Lal Indraji, Pran Nath Chopra and others held the Kasana gotra to be successors of the Kushans, and that Cunningham identified the Kushans as Gurjars; the same site also states, without naming a source, that Kasana Gujjars descend from Kush, son of Rama. The Punjab ethnographies record something else: Fagan in 1904 and Rose give Kasana, with Gorsi and Burgat, as the three sections Gujjars count as the original ones, called the dhai got, the two and a half gots. How the Gujjars as a whole arose is argued among historians. Some hold to a migration from the Caucasus or Central Asia, which K. Warikoo calls the most prevalent theory and which Wikipedia's survey of the debate describes as older speculation; others read Gurjara as a region or royal title and argue that Rajput clans themselves came from groups such as the Gurjaras. This page takes no side.

Historical Journey

William Crooke's Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh (1896) names Kasana among the leading Gujjar clans of the Meerut and Bulandshahr districts, and says Gujjar clan names come from the titles of tribal leaders or from the villages of early settlement. Denzil Ibbetson (Panjab Castes, 1916) includes it among nineteen Gujjar clans. P. L. Fagan, writing on Hoshiarpur in 1904, names it among the gots of the district. Modern work carries it further: Bindu Sahni's fieldwork among the Gujjars of Himachal Pradesh (2012 to 2013) records Kasana among the gotras there and finds that the Kasana Gujjars of that state are all settled, not nomadic, and K. Warikoo lists it among the prominent gotras of Jammu and Kashmir. No inscription, chronicle or family record that dates the clan has come to light in the sources I could open.

How the Gotra Is Kept

Gujjars of the same gotra tend to live together. Warikoo writes that the gotra's main function is to regulate marriage and that Gujjars keep gotra exogamy. Fagan, in 1904, recorded no bar on marriage within the gots of Hoshiarpur, but Sahni's informants in Himachal Pradesh say they do not marry within their own gotra. No kuldevi common to all Kasana families is documented in the sources I found; practice differs by branch and village.

Presence Across Regions