@TIinExile @neha_aks Yes, but it finally does, does it not, somewhere during what can be called the classical phase, leaving not much of a trace in the post phase. What we see is clearly a very interesting transition to total patronymy.
@TIinExile @neha_aks Yes, there's clearly a widespread tendency attestable -- often the figure of the father is more fleeting, and it's also matrilocal. In this case, you also marry that against the overall tendency and attitudes from the devas, despite being kin.
@TIinExile @neha_aks There are two separate strands here. One is the higher degree of variety before codification, which is general. In this specific case, one sees a kind of classing on that basis, and conflict, which the higher deities try to adjudicate over.
@TIinExile @neha_aks The codification, as we all know, leant heavily towards patriliny, and leached a lot of the quasi-customary primacy and centrality that one can see accorded to the mother in the ancient ages.
@TIinExile @neha_aks Where does one say "extraneous origin"? I only point to what the stories say: the children of Diti being seen as classed separately from the devas, treated differently, and often in conflict. The matronymy is a more general fact, and a revelatory one.
@TIinExile @neha_aks The "importance of the mother" as flowing from later practices is clearly of a different sort, leached of some of its most vital elements: being seen as primarily your mother's child, named after her, often growing up with her.
@TIinExile @neha_aks The earlier preponderance of that -- in an age where conjugal/nuptial norms also clearly allowed for more variety than in the post-Mitakshara phase -- can justifiably make one imagine a different social world, and try make reasonable inferences.
@TIinExile @neha_aks Those are of course much larger points, to do with evolution of society over millennia. To try and understand which one can look at external, more contemporary evidence too: matriliny, where you find it, including in Kerala, offers exactly the same patterns.
