Sanadhya Brahmin

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Sanadya Brahmin (or Sanadh) are a community of Brahmins, living prominently in Western Uttar Pradesh area of India.

Sanadhya Samhita gives an account of the origin of the Sanadhya community. Lord Ramachandra of Ayodhya invited some Adi Gauda brahmins to conduct a yajna. As dakshina he gave villages to 750 of them, who came to be called Sanadhya. They were engages in tapa, thus came to be called Sanadhya^[1]:

सच्छब्देन तपो ग्राह्यं तेनाध्या ये द्विजोत्तमाः||

An alternative theory is that since they worship Lord Sun (or Surya) (Skt san), they are called Sanadhya. Sikh Guru Gobind Singh has mentioned that his ancestors once lived in the Sanadh region, this may have been the region from where the Sansdhya originated. There should not be a practice amongst brahmins to compare one subclass with the other in terms like superior or inferior.Brahmins are known by Gotras. Association of adjectives related to a region simply mean they are from that region as it was a practice to call one by his place he beloned to. Otherwise the vedic brahmins are long back gone and they never lived in the present day India.

Sanadhya word carries two very ancient Sanskrit roots, in fact, of vedic antiquity. Sanah for a specific sacrifice and aadhiyah or aarurha means 'incessantly engaged in', and also 'full of opulence' or 'rich in' or 'firmly walking (or mounted) foremost and ahead' on the path of penance. Hence those who possess opulence of Sanah sacrifice, or 'ahead in austerities'or 'mounted firmly, foremost and ahead of all, on the Tapascharya' were called sanadhyas in comparision to the Purohitas and Priest who lived in cities or villages.The term is non-local, and independent of region. It is associated with the Aaranyaka brahmins, the forest dwellers, and therefore the much later classification into regional subclass into Panch Gauda and Panch Dravid does not include the forest dwellers. It is true that every brahmin, wherever he may belong to, has been a descendent of the original clans of Forest dwellers/or those engaged in austerities and penance.

The first story cited from the so called Sanadhya Samhita does not seem to be consistent. The composition of the Samhita does not seem to have any remote date in the history.During Rama's time, by any rate going prior to 600 BC, the time when division into subclasses as we presently know them, had not taken place. No question, then, arises for calling them to be a group of Adi gauda's participated in the yajna. In Rama's time there were only three occupations of Brahmins priests, Purohitas and Aranyaka brahmins,some of them elevated to the level of Rishi. The Samahita seems to be quite recent or post-classification era, far down in time from the Valmiki Ramayana. Rama did meet Aranyaka brahmins in the Valmiki Ramayana, and he did call them to be always engaged in Tapa and therefore were the brahmins worthy of 'high reverence'. That is all.

The second hypothesis related to Guru Gobind Singh Sahib's ancestral village Sanadh, it again does not prove to be native place for sanadhyas and the name sanadhyas to be after this village.The opposite may be a possibility that the place came to be called Sanadh after the Sanadhyas.

[edit] Famous Sanadhyas

• Keshavdas (1555–1617), author of Rasikpriya etc. of Orchha, classical Hindi poet^[2]
• Pandit Totaram Sanadhya who lived in Fiji^[3]
• Hon'ble Shankar Dayal Sharma,former President of India

[edit] References