Gowda Saraswat Brahmins
| Regions with significant populations | |
|---|---|
| Primary populations in Karnataka, Goa and Maharashtra | |
| Religion | |
| Hinduism | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Saraswat Brahmins,Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmins |
Goud (also spelt as Gaud or Gawd) Saraswat Brahmins are a Hindu Brahmin community in India and a part of the larger Saraswat Brahmin community. They belong to the Pancha (five) Gauda Brahmana groups. They are popularly referred to by the acronym GSB. They primarily speak Konkani as their mother tongue, but they tend to be fluent in language of the region they are resident in. For example, those living in Karnataka also speak Tulu and Kannada whereas those living in Maharashtra speak Marathi Similarly, those living in Kerala can speak Malayalam.
The Saraswat Brahmins believe themselves to be named after the mythical Saraswati river, which was thought to arise in the Himalayas and flow through the present Punjab and Rajasthan region to the western sea near Dwaraka, in Gujarat. Saraswat brahmins are mentioned in the Ramayana, Mahabharata and Bhavishya Purana. The Saraswati river of Rigvedic and Vedic texts has been historically identified with parts of watercourses near Lake Pushkar in Rajasthan, Sidhpur in Northern Gujarat and Somnath in Saurashtra, Gujarat. A popular belief identifies it with an underground flow at Prayag, Allahabad, emerging at the confluence of Ganga and Yamuna to form the Triveni Sangam. It has been suggested that around 1000 BCE the Yamuna breached and permanently drained the Sarwasati, the most important water course of the Swati Valley civilisation and early Vedic Civilisation; the desertification of their homeland would have compelled the Saraswati migration to the other parts of Bharat Khanda. According to the Sahyadrikhanda of the Skanda Purana, ninety-six Brahmin families belonging to ten gotras migrated to Goa from western India, along with Parashurama. Linguistic evidence for such a migration of Saraswats to Konkan and Deccan is based on distribution of Indo-Aryan linguistic expansions, beginning before 500 BCE.
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