Grihya Sutras

SR No.: 007685
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

Page 257

IV ADHYÂYA, 6 KANDIKÂ, 5.
247
together with its ashes and with its receptacle to the south with the half-verse,' I send far away the fleshdevouring Agni' (Rig-veda X, 16, 9).
3. Having thrown that (fire) down at a place where four roads meet or somewhere else, they walk round it three times, turning their left sides towards it, beating their left thighs with their left hands.
4. They then should return home without looking back, bathe in water, have their hair, their beards the hair of their bodies, and their nails cut, and furnish themselves with new jars, pots, vessels for rinsing the mouth, wreathed with garlands of Sami flowers, with fuel of Samf wood, with two pieces of Sami wood for kindling fire, and with branches to be laid round the fire, with bull's dung and a bull's hide, fresh butter, a stone, and as many bunches of Kusa grass as there are young women (in the house).
5. At the time of the Agni(-hotra) he should kindle fire with the hemistich, 'Here may this other Gatavedas' (Rig-veda X, 16, 9).
commentator is right. The ceremonies described in the following Sätras seem to point rather to a renewal of the sacred Grihya fire, the old one having proved unlucky to the sacrificer. In the same way, in the Srauta ritual, a sacrificer who, after having performed the Adhâna, has bad luck, performs the Punarâdheya.
3. Comp. Kâtyâyana-Srauta-sûtra V, 10, 15.
5. The text has agnivelâyâm, which Nârâyana explains by agnihotraviharana kâle aparâhne. He states that the fire should be produced by attrition of two new kindling woods (arani), mentioned in Sätra 4. The fire thus kindled is to be used, he says, as a kitchen-fire. Herein he seems to me to have misunderstood the meaning of the ceremony; see the note on Sätra 2. The hemistich quoted in this Sūtra (which is the second half of the same verse of which the first half is prescribed in Sätra 2) clearly points to the sacred quality of the fire in question ; it runs thus, 'Here may this other Gatavedas carry the offerings to the gods, the knowing one.'
Digitized by Google