Yadav

Clans and Kinship

Yadav society is made up of large divisions that marry within themselves, each holding many exogamous clans. William Crooke (1896), quoting H. M. Elliot, recorded three such divisions among the Ahirs of the North-Western Provinces: the Nandbans of the central Doab, the Jadubans west of the Jamuna and in the upper Doab, and the Gualbans of the lower Doab and Benares, which 'acknowledge no connection except that of being all Ahirs'. The Nandbans trace their line to Nanda, Krishna's foster father, and the Gualbans to the gopis of Braj. Below the division is the clan, the gotra, whose names differ from district to district. In Elliot's account Ahirs avoid marriage only within the four gotras nearest related to them, among them the father's and the mother's. In other regions the divisions have other names, and the regional groups that now call themselves Yadav kept their own marriage circles.

No gotra list is given. Crooke (1896), quoting Elliot, names some two dozen principal gotras of the Nandbans and others for particular districts, and Russell and Hira Lal (1916) print Ahir lists for the Central Provinces, but they are not reproduced on this page. The three large divisions are described above.

In the Official Lists

• Other Backward Class (central list)

  Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Delhi, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, West Bengal

  The wording differs by state, and in several states Ahir and Yadav sit in one entry with Gwala, Gope or Goala; the exact wording of each entry was not checked.

The states are those Wikipedia gives for the Yadavs in the central list of the National Commission for Backward Classes, citing the NCBC state lists (accessed 2011); the lists change by resolution, so confirm the current entries. Wikipedia also names Karnataka, whose entry may cover other pastoral communities and is not shown. Each state also keeps its own OBC list, not checked here. In Uttar Pradesh a state committee in 2001 proposed sub-categories within the OBC list.

Checked on 2026-11-06 against the sources below. The lists are amended from time to time and can differ by district; for a certificate, the current order or the state's list is what counts.

Name and Origin

Yadav means a descendant of Yadu, the legendary king whose line, in the epics and Puranas, includes Krishna, and Yadav associations present this as Kshatriya descent. The name Ahir is derived from the Abhiras, a people named in inscriptions and in Sanskrit texts; some scholars have used inscriptions to argue that the Ahirs and Gavlis represent the ancient Yadavas and Abhiras. Lucia Michelutti describes the core of the community's account as a folk theory that all Indian pastoral castes descend from the Yadu line to which Krishna belonged.

History

In 1910 Rao Bahadur Balbir Singh founded the Ahir Yadav Kshatriya Mahasabha, which held that Ahirs were Kshatriyas descended from Yadu and really known as Yadavs, and encouraged them to take the sacred thread. The All-India Yadav Mahasabha was founded at Allahabad in 1924 by local groups from Bihar, Punjab and what is now Uttar Pradesh; first organised by V. K. Khedkar and developed by Rao Balbir Singh, it campaigned for the Yadav name, for self-education, for teetotalism and vegetarianism, and for lighter dowries. William Pinch, Christophe Jaffrelot, M. S. A. Rao and Lucia Michelutti have studied this movement; Michelutti calls the process by which Ahir, Gwala, Gope and other regional groups came to share the Yadav name 'yadavisation'. By 2003 the Mahasabha covered seventeen states.

Faith and Worship

Krishna is at the centre of the community's account of itself: in the folk theory Lucia Michelutti describes, the Yadavs descend from the line of Yadu to which Krishna belonged.

Customs

Marriage is within the community and outside one's own gotra. The Yadav Mahasabha has long promoted the Yadav name, education, teetotalism and vegetarianism, and has worked to reduce the burden of dowry and to raise the age of marriage.