One Brahmanical practice, evident from c. 1000 BCE onwards, was to classify people (especially Brahmanas) in terms of gotras. Each gotra was named after a Vedic seer, and all those who belonged to the same gotra were regarded as his descendants. Two rules about gotra were particularly important: women were expected to give up their father’s gotra and adopt that of their husband on marriage and members of the same gotra could not marry. One way to find out whether this was commonly followed is to consider the names of men and women, which were sometimes derived from gotra names. These names are available for powerful ruling lineages such as the Satavahanas who ruled over parts of western India and the Deccan (c. second century BCE-second century CE). Several of their inscriptions have been recovered, which allow historians to trace family ties, including marriages.