Talk:Gens

message: Additional information on the Gens as a formation studied in early sociology by the likes of Lewis Henry Morgan and Friedrich Engels, for example in Engels' The Origin of the Family, Private Property and The State (see here: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/index.htm ) should be included in this article.
:The suggestion that the importance of the gens in early sociology be included in this article appears reasonable, but it should be approached with caution not to stray too far from the essential nature of the gens as it related to Roman culture and society.  Any detailed discussion should be dealt with under the topic of sociology, or individual studies, or as a separate article. P Aculeius (talk) 00:30, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

message: please check my edit.100110100 01:22, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The statement labeled dubious in the second paragraph of the section on the social function of the gens was intended to assert that the gentes were far more influential in the development of Roman law and religion than in political areas or the Roman constitution.  This is stated in nearly identical terms in the article on the gens in the Oxford Classical Dictionary, 2nd Edition.  I have revised this paragraph to emphasize the intended meaning, in case a different one was implied. P Aculeius (talk) 00:30, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Since no additional information has been submitted concerning this topic, and disputing the statement in the source material, can we remove the dubious flag? P Aculeius (talk) 22:20, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  check 

message: The Wikipedia Manual of Style does not recommend linking to years unless they pertain closely to the subject matter of the article (see Wikipedia:Linking).  In this article, the dates are merely being used for illustrative purposes.  Additionally, two of the three dates linked in the most recent edit are to articles that don't yet exist.  I don't see any compelling reason for linking to these years in this article... if you click on 379 B.C. you might find a mention of the destruction of the Fabii at the Cremera, but you'd find that more easily by clicking on those words instead of the year, and the article on 379 won't talk about gentes in general, so it isn't really relevant to the subject matter of this article.  I think that the dates should be delinked.  P Aculeius (talk) 22:20, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Linking Dates

message: A "see also" section is generally used to draw readers' attention to closely related articles that may or may not have been mentioned or briefly discussed in the body of an article.  The question is whether the Indian concept of the Jati is closely related to that of the gens.  Hölderlin2019 says that it is cognate with the word "gens", which is certainly possible (I haven't investigated the etymology), but if so the connection is remote, presumably thousands of years since the words shared a common root.
The main question is whether the two concepts are analogous.  A gens was a kinship-based group claiming a common descent and surname, observing private rites and rituals, and in theory, governing the conduct of its members through private laws and disciplines—although there are very few examples of the latter known from Roman history, apart from discipline imposed by a paterfamilias upon his own household, and scholars now seem to doubt whether there was really any kind of practical authoritarian structure, at least in historical times.
According to our article on Jatis, they are described as "sub-castes", closed communities that, unlike Roman gentes, practice endogamous marriage and generally avoid social interaction with other sub-castes.  There is nothing in the article to suggest that they claimed descent from a common ancestor; and while their members may have shared common traits, customs, or religious rites, there is nothing about private rites or rituals, or an internal hierarchical structure imposing private laws or discipline across the entire group (either theoretical or practical).
Roman gentes always claimed descent from a single ancestor, although it was possible for the same surname to have arisen in multiple places, and some of the people who bore it might be the descendants of freedmen of the original gens, and not technically a part of it.  They were not closed communities; they were not restricted to one or two occupations; there were no taboos against interaction with other gentes; they did not practice endogamous marriage (marriage between two members of the same gens was rare); for most of Roman history they and their individual members could move up or down in social status (the initial distinction between patricians and plebeians does not seem to have been an absolute bar to upward mobility in the early Republic, and to the extent that it was a socio-political barrier between all patrician and plebeian gentes, it had little practical value outside the period from roughly 450 to 350 BC).
So as far as I can see, the only practical similarities between the gens and the Jati is that they were both communities of individuals sharing surnames and some degree of kinship or social status, although each of these also differed significantly between the two.  There are many other traits that appear to distinguish them, and Roman gentes seem to have more in common with Scottish or Irish clans—which would not justify the inclusion of those topics in the "see also" section, in my opinion, or that of every other surname-sharing kinship grouping from modern cultures.  I fail to see any special reason to include Jatis but exclude the others, and no particular reason why any of these or other similar concepts in cultures around the world should be in the "see also" section.  P Aculeius (talk) 14:52, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with 's arguments. Addition of "Jati" (to the exclusion of much more similar concepts such as Scottish or Irish clans or Batak margas) in the "see also" section would be an etymological fallacy. –Austronesier (talk) 10:59, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is the Indian Jati sufficiently analogous to the gens to be included in the "see also" section?