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this, there is no possibility whatever that he can have used the expression ‘Åsvalâyanasûtrakam' with regard to the Mahânâmnîs; to apply the designation of a Sûtra to the Mahânâmnî hymn would be no less absurd than to apply it to any Sukta whatever of the Rik-Samhitâ. On the other hand, the fifth book of the Aranyaka is a Sûtra ; it is the only part of the whole body of the Aranyaka collection which is composed in the Sûtra style. And it treats of a special part of the Rig-veda ritual the rest of which is embodied in its entirety, with the omission only of that very part, in the two great Sûtras of Asvalâyana. There seems to me, therefore, to be little doubt as to the fifth Aranyaka really being the text referred to by Shadgurusishya, though I do not know how to explain his setting down this book as the fourth. And I may add that there is a passage, hitherto, as far as I know, unnoticed, in Sâyana's Sâma-veda commentary, in which that author directly assigns the fifth Aranyaka not, as in the Rig-veda commentary, to Saunaka, but to Åsvalâyana. Sâyana there says1: yathâ bahvrikâm adhyâpakâ mahâvrataprayogapratipâdakam Asvalâyananirmitam kalpasûtram aranye dhîyamânâh pankamam âranyakam iti vedatvena vyavaharanti.
3
INTRODUCTION.
Instead of asserting, therefore, that of the two last Aranyakas of the Aitareyinas the one is ascribed to Saunaka, the other to Asvalâyana, we must state the case otherwise not two Aranyakas were, according to Sâyana and Shadgurusishya, composed by those Sûtrakâras, but one, viz. the fifth, which forms a sort of supplement to the great body of the Sûtras of that Karana, and which is ascribed either to Saunaka or to Âsvalâyana. Perhaps further research will enable us to decide whether that
Sutra portion of the Aranyaka, or we may say quite as well, that Aranyaka portion of the Sûtra, belongs to the author of the Srauta-sûtra, or should be considered as a remnant of a more ancient composition, of which the portion studied in the forest has survived, while the portion
Sâma-veda (Bibl. Indica), vol. i, p. 19.
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| SR No. | 007685 |
| Book Title | Grihya Sutras |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Hermann Oldenberg |
| Publisher | Oxford |
| Publication Year | 1886 |
| Total Pages | 2642 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 49 MB |