Kul, vansh and old records: tracing a family in Maharashtra

Maharashtra has some of the best-kept family records in the country, if you know where to look. This guide covers the family traditions that identify your lineage and the offices that hold the written proof.

Start with your kul: kuldaivat, devak and gotra

Before you visit any office, find out the markers that identify your lineage. Elders usually know these even when they have forgotten older names.

• Kuldaivat or kuldevi is the family deity, such as Khandoba of Jejuri, Bhavani of Tuljapur, Mahalakshmi of Kolhapur or Renuka of Mahur. Families that share a surname and a kuldaivat are often branches of the same line.
• Devak is the clan emblem, often a tree, plant or object, that many Maratha and other families worship at weddings. Families with the same devak traditionally do not intermarry, which is why elders remember it.
• Gotra plays a similar role in many other communities.

Write these on the root person in your tree. They help you recognise relatives in other villages and match your family to records kept by priests.

Land records: 7/12, 8A and ferfar entries

For families that owned agricultural land, land records are often the single best source, because every inheritance was written down.

• 7/12 extract (saat-baara utara) shows who currently holds a piece of land.
• 8A extract lists all the land held by one account holder in a village.
• Ferfar (mutation) entries record every change of ownership. When an owner died, an heirship entry (varas nond) named each of the heirs, often with sons, daughters and widows listed together. Reading these entries backwards can take you through several generations.

Current extracts are available online through the state's Mahabhumi land records portal. Older ferfar entries and old 7/12 registers are kept with the village talathi and in the tahsil office record room, where you can apply for certified copies. Taking the survey or gat number of the family land makes the search much faster.

School general registers

Every primary school keeps a general register (GR) recording each pupil's name, father's name, date of birth, caste and date of admission. Old zilla parishad and municipal schools in villages may have registers going back to the early 1900s. If you know which school a grandfather attended, the headmaster can often find his entry and issue an extract.

Birth and death registers

Gram panchayats and municipal offices hold birth and death registers. Registration became compulsory across India under a 1969 law, so entries before that are patchier, but many villages kept records earlier. Ask at the gram panchayat first and then at the tahsil office for older volumes.

Priests' genealogy registers at pilgrimage places

For generations, families recorded their visits with hereditary priests (tirth purohits) at pilgrimage places, especially when performing last rites. The priests kept registers, often called bahi, organised by district, village and surname. Haridwar is the best known, but depending on where your family performed rites, useful registers may also be with priests at places such as Nashik, Trimbakeshwar, Pandharpur or Kashi.

To search, you usually need your surname, native village, district, kuldaivat and the names of one or two known ancestors. Each entry was written by the visiting family member, and it can name several generations at once.

The Maharashtra State Archives

For families with a long recorded history, such as holders of old inam, watan or village office rights, the Maharashtra State Archives are worth a visit. The Pune office holds the Peshwa Daftar, a very large collection of Maratha-era administrative records in Modi script. Research here takes patience and usually help from someone who reads Modi, but it can take a family back to the 1700s.

A family vanshavali is sometimes needed officially

You may also need a written vanshavali (family tree) for official work, for example with caste validity applications, land partition or succession matters. The records described above are the same ones those processes rely on, so building your tree carefully now can save time later. For any legal use, take advice from a lawyer or the concerned office on the exact format they require.

Putting it together

Start with elders and the kul markers, then use land records and school registers to confirm names and fill in dates, and use priests' registers and the archives to go further back. Add each confirmed person to your tree as you go, and note in the details field where you found them so the next person in the family can check it.