Patrilineal

adjective

/ˌpætrɪˈlɪniəl/

Relating to a system of descent, inheritance, or kinship traced through the father's line. In patrilineal societies, clan membership, surnames, and property pass from father to children. The vast majority of Indian castes and communities practice patrilineal descent — the gotra system in Hinduism, for instance, traces male-line lineage back to a Vedic sage. Under the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 (amended 2005), daughters now have equal coparcenary rights in ancestral property, qualifying the purely patrilineal character of Hindu personal law.

✍️ Usage in a UPSC answer

The Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 fundamentally disrupted the patrilineal logic of the Mitakshara joint family by conferring daughters the same coparcenary rights as sons, a reform the Supreme Court in Vineeta Sharma v. Rakesh Sharma (2020) applied retrospectively.

Synonyms

father-line descentagnaticpatri-descentpatrilinear

Antonyms

matrilinealuterine descentmother-line descent

🌱 Word Family

patriliny (noun), patrilineage (noun), patrilineally (adverb), patrilineal descent (compound noun)

🔡 Root

Latin pater (genitive patris) = father + linealis = of a line; literally 'of the father's line'

📜 Etymology

A 19th-century anthropological compound of Latin pater (father) and linealis (of a line), parallel to 'matrilineal', systematised by Morgan and McLennan. The concept maps to the Sanskrit pitru-paksha (father's side) and the Vedic gotra system, which is explicitly patrilineal — a child inherits the gotra of the father, and gotra-based exogamy prohibits marriage within the paternal line.

🧠 Memory Hook

PATRI = father (paternity, patriarch). LINEAL = of the line. PATRILINEAL = follow the FATHER'S LINE for inheritance and identity. Simple contrast: MATRI = MOTHER / PATRI = FATHER — both answer the question 'whose line do you belong to?'

👥 Society 📖 Seen in: Salient Features of Indian Society — D...

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