Khanna Got

What “Got” means for the Khatri

Khatri surname clans are grouped into ranked ghar (houses) that set who marries whom. Rose (1919) calls the clans sections. Families writing in English often call the clan name a gotra, though it is not a Vedic gotra.

Name and Origin

Rose's Glossary gives two legends that put the Khanna beside the Kapur and Mehra. In the first, the Khatri sections that resisted a decree of Ala-ud-din Khilji on widow remarriage sent a deputation to Delhi, and the three clans Khanna, Kapur and Mehra, whose ancestors led the resistance at their mother's urging, became the Dhaighar, with the Seth-Kakar affiliated. In the second, Mehr Chand, Kahn Chand and Kapur Chand were three Khatris who went to Delhi in attendance on one of Akbar's Rajput wives, were cut off from the rest of the caste, and married only into each other's families. The three names match the Mehra, Khanna and Kapur. Rose calls the first explanation hardly tenable, since the three clans are not Dhaighar only, and gives both as legend. He also says that the Khanna and Kapur are both of the Kaushal gotra, yet intermarry.

Historical Journey

The Khatri are a trading and writing community of Punjab, and historians do not agree on their varna. Wikipedia, citing M. N. Srinivas, notes that Khatri census returns claimed no varna in 1911, Kshatriya status in 1921 and Vaishya in 1931, and says Satish Chandra described them as traders rather than clearly Kshatriya or Vaishya. The Sikh Gurus were Khatri, from the Bedi, Trehan, Bhalla and Sodhi clans. In Rose's account the Khanna is one of the twelve sections of the Bari (Baraghar) group and is named as one of the three eponymous clans of the Dhaighar. The Bari group has the sub-groups Dhaighar, Charghar, Chheghar and Baraghar, and sits beside the larger Bunjahi (fifty-two sections) and the Sarin. Rose says status among these groups is governed by hypergamy, the narrower the circle into which a family gives daughters the higher its standing, and that marriage expenses among the Dhaighar were very slight, among the Barahghar heavy, among the Bunjahi very heavy and among the Sarin ruinous.

How the Got Is Kept

Rose records that Khanna Khatris took their sons to Dipalpur, in the Chunian tahsil of Lahore district, for the maunan, the first head-shaving. They worshipped the shrine of Jasraj there (Baba Balu Jasrai in a footnote), and Khanna boys never wore a top-knot, which the Jasraj legend explains. The Kapur, Malhotra and Seth Khatris could hold the maunan anywhere, so long as there was no river or well with water from Dipalpur. Wikipedia's article on Lal Jas Raj says the annual mela at the Dipalpur shrine, where Hindus came for the head-shaving, ended after 1947 when the Hindu population left. In the ghar scheme, as Wikipedia summarises Baij Nath Puri (The Khatris, 1988) and Sudhir Kakar, the Dhai Ghar are Kapoor, Khanna and Mehra or Malhotra, the Char Ghar adds Seth, and the Barah Ghar and the Bunjahi are the larger groups. These are early twentieth century records, and practice differs by family and region.

Presence Across Regions

Stories and Legends