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 508

GRIHYA-SÛTRAS.
what the person making the offering had to say was doubtless limited to short, possibly prose formulas, so that these ceremonies remained free from the poetry of the above-mentioned families of priests 1. We think that the character of the verses given in the Grihya-sútras, which had to be repeated at the performance of the different ceremonies, justifies us in making these conjectures. Some of these verses indeed are old Vedic verses, but we have no proof that they were composed for the purposes of the Grihya ceremonies, and the connection in which we find them in the Rig-veda proves rather the contrary. Another portion of these verses and songs proves to have been composed indeed for the very Grihya ceremonies for which they are prescribed in the texts of the ritual: but these verses are more recent than the old parts of the Rig-veda. Part of them are found in the Rig-veda in a position which speaks for their more recent origin, others are not contained in the Rig-veda at all. Many of these verses are found in the more recent Vedic Samhitas, especially in the Atharva-veda, a Samhita which may be regarded in the main as a treasure of Grihya verses : others finally have not as yet been traced to any Vedic Samhita, and we know them from the Grihya-sútras only. We may infer that, during the latter part of the Rig-veda period, ceremonies such as marriage and burial began to be decked out with poetry as had long been the case with the Soma offering. The principal collection of marriage sentences and the sentences for the
It is doubtful whether at the time of the Rig-veda the custom was established for the sacrificer to keep burning constantly a sacred Grihya fire besides the three Srauta fires. There is, as far as I know, no express mention of the Grihya fire in the Rig-veda; but that is no proof that it had then not yet come into use. Of the Srauta fires the gârhapatya is the only one that is mentioned, though all three were known beyond a doubt. (Ludwig, Rig-veda, vol. iii, P. 355; in some of the passages cited the word gårbapatya does not refer to the garbapatya fire.)
Rig-veda X, 85. It is clear that what we have here is not a hymn intended to be recited all at once, but that, as in a number of other cases in the Rig-veda, the single verses or groups of verses were to be used at different points in the performance of a rite (or, in other cases, in the telling of a story). Compare my paper, 'Akhyana-Hymnen im Rig-veda,' Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, vol. xxxix, p. 83.-Many verses of Rig-veda X, 85 occur again in the fourteenth book of the Atharva-veda.
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