Zend Avesta Part 01

SR No.: 007671
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: James Darmesteter
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1895
Total Pages: 2695
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 49 MB

Page 1444

xii
VISHNU.
works hitherto printed, and in the law-books of Manu, Yâgñavalkya, and others; but nearly all are quoted, exactly in the same order as in this work, in the Kârâyanîya-kathaka Grihya-sûtra, while some of them have been traced in the Kathaka as well. And what is even more important, the Kâthaka Grihya does not contain those Mantras alone, but nearly all the Sûtras in which they occur ; and it may be stated therefore, secondly, that the Vishnu-sútra has four long sections, viz. Chapter LXXIII, and Chapters XXI, LXVII, LXXXVI, excepting the final parts, in common with that work, while the substance of Chapter LXXIV may also be traced in it. The agreement between both works is very close, and where they differ it is generally due to false readings or to enlargements on the part of the Vishnu-sútra. However, there are a few cases, in which the version of the latter work is evidently more genuine than that of the former, and it follows, therefore, that the author of the Vishnusûtra cannot have borrowed his rules for the performance of Sraddhas &c. from the Kathaka Grihya-sútra, but that both must have drawn from a common source, i.e. no doubt from the traditions current in the Katha school, to which this work is indebted for so many of its Mantras as well.
For these reasons I fully concur in the view advanced by Dr. Bühler, that the bulk of the so-called Vishnu-smriti is really the ancient Dharma-sútra of the Kârâyanîya - kathaka Sâkhâ of the Black Yagur-veda. It ranks, like other Dharma-sûtras, with the Grihya and Srauta-sútras of its school; the latter of which, though apparently lost now, is distinctly referred to in the Grihya-sútra in several places, and must have been in existence at the time when the Commentaries on Kâtyâyana's Srauta-sútras were composed, in which it is frequently quoted by the name
1 For details I may refer the reader to my German paper, Das Dharmasútra des Vishnu und das Kathakagrihyasätra, in the Transactions of the Royal Bavarian Academy of Science for 1879, where the sections corresponding in both works have been printed in parallel columns, the texts from the Kathaka Grihya-sâtra having been prepared from two of the MSS. of Devapâla's Commentary discovered by Dr. Bühler (Kasmir Report, Nos. 11, 12), one in Devanagari, and the other in Sarada characters.
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