8. Exogamy.
Educated Kāyasths now follow the standard rule of exogamy, which prohibits marriage between persons within five degrees of affinity on the female side and seven on the male. That is, persons having a common grandparent on the female side cannot intermarry, while for those related through males the prohibition extends a generation further back. This is believed to be the meaning of the rule but it is not quite clear. In Damoh the Srivāstab Kāyasths still retain exogamous sections which are all named after places in the United Provinces, as Hamīrpur ki baink (section), Lucknowbar, Kāshi ki Pānde (a wise man of Benāres), Partābpūria, Cawnpore-bar, Sultānpuria and so on. They say that the ancestors of these sections were families who came from the above places in northern India, and settled in Damoh; here they came to be known by the places from which they had immigrated, and so founded new exogamous sections. A man cannot marry in his own section, or that of his mother or grandmother. In the Central Provinces a man may marry two sisters, but in northern India this is prohibited.