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146 INDIA. AS DESCRIBED IN DARLY TEXTS
upon kula and gotta, the former meaning the collection of cognates and agnates and the latter, the cultural heritage from a highly endowed æşi. The term nikaya may be taken to have comprehended the sense of both kula and gotta.
In the Pāli texts, however, the term gotta has been employed in the sense of ancestry, lineage.' 'It includes all those descended,, or supposed to be descended, from a common ancestor. A gotta name is always distinguished from the personal name, the name drawn from place of origin or residence, or from occupation, and lastly from the nickname. It probably means agnate rather than cognate.'1 In support of this one may indeed cite the description given in the Sutta-nipāta of the Sakyas as: Adiccă nāma gottend, Sākiyā nāma jātiyā, 'known as Adityas by their ancestry, and as Säkyas by their birth'; and the introduction in the Jātakas of Dhananjaya as'a Kuru king of the Yudhitthila-gotta, 'of the stook. of Yudhişthira'.2 But when Vāsudova, a Khattiya, is described as Kanha, i.e., 'one belonging to the Kanhāyana-gotta', 3 the Buddha as Gotama, 'one belonging to the Gotama-gotta', and the Mallas as Vásetthas, 'those belonging
1 Pali-English Dictionary (P.T.S. ed), sub voor gotta
Jätaka, iü, p. 400. 3 Thid. iv, p. 84.
