On the occasion of Guru Pūrṇimā, our thoughts may turn to the venerable lineages of successive teachers and students in India.  As we will see, the need to record and preserve genealogical details of family and pedagogical lineages was already recognized in India in the earliest times.  Indeed, this is very likely a continuation of the concerns of proto-Indo-European people.  For many ancient peoples, family would perhaps be the main source of personal identity, and the basis of all religious life.

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