KULA. SANSN. A family, a race, a tribe. Pro perly the got of a Hindu is his tribe, and Kula is the race. But Kula among the Rajnuts means a tribe, and corresponds to the Afghan Khel. Gotra or Kula mean a family, and existed amongst Kshatriya, Vaisya as well as Brahmans. Gotra depends on a real or imaginary community of blood, and then corresponds to what we call families. Kula forms various compound words, as Kula-deva, household deity; Kulacharya, a family priest ; Kulina, of a good family.
No Hindu house is supposed to be without its Kula-deva or tutelary divinity, but the notion attached to this character is now very far from precise. The deity who is the object of heredi tary or family worship, the Kula-deva, is always Siva, or Vishnu, or Durga, or other principal personage of the Hindu mythology ; but the Griha-deva or household god rarely bears any distinct appellation. In Bengal, the domestic god is sometimes the saligram, sometimes the tulsi plant, sometimes a basket with a little rice in it, and sometimes a water jar, to any of which a brief adoration is daily addressed, most usually by the females of the family. Ocensionally small
images of Lakshmi or Chandi fulfil the office, or, should a snake appear, it is worshipped as the guardian of the dwelling. In general, in former times, the household deities were regarded as the unseen spirits of ill, the ghosts and gob lins who hovered about every spot, and claimed some particular sites as their own. At the close of all ceremonies, offerings were made to them in the open air, to keep them in good humour, by scattering a little rice with a short formula. Thus, at the end of the daily ceremony, the householder is enjoined by Menu-3,90 to throw up his oblation (ball) in the open air to all the gods, to those who walk by day and those who walk by night.' In this light the household god corresponds better with the genii locorum than with the lares or penates of antiquity.-1Vilson's Hind. Th.