Educated Kayasths 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 Srivastab Kayasths still retain exogamous
sections which are all named after places in the United Provinces, as
Hamirpur ki baink (section), Lucknowbar, Kashi ki Pande (a wise man
of Benares), Partabpuria, Cawnpore-bar, Sultanpuria 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.