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 509

INTRODUCTION.
xi
burial of the dead1 are found in the tenth Mandala of the Rig-veda, which, for the most part, is known to be of later origin than the preceding portions of the collections. If we look into the character of the verses, which these long Grihya songs are composed of, we shall find additional grounds for assuming their early origin. A few remarks about their metrical character will make this clear 3. There is no other metre in which the contrast between the early and later periods of Vedic literature manifests itself so clearly as in the Anushtubh-metre *. The Anushubh hemistich consists of sixteen syllables, which are divided by the caesura into two halves of eight syllables each. The second of these halves has as a rule the iambic ending (~~), though this rule was not so strictly carried out in the early as in the later period. The iambic ending is also the rule in the older parts of the Veda for the close of the first half, i.e. for the four syllables before the caesura ®. We know that the later prosody, as we see it in certain late parts of Vedic literature, in the Pâli Pitakas of the Buddhists, and later in the great epic poems, not only departs from the usage of the older period, but adopts a directly contrary course, i. e. the iambic ending of the first pâda, which was formerly the rule, is not allowed at all later, and instead of it the prevailing ending is the antispast (). It goes without saying that such a change in metrical usage, as the one just described, cannot have
1 Rig-veda X, 14-16, and several other hymns of the tenth book. Compare the note at Asvalâyana-Grihya IV, 4. 6.
' Compare my Hymnen des Rig-veda, vol. i (Prolegomena), pp. 265 seq. * Compare the account of the historical development of some of the Vedic metres which I have given in my paper, 'Das altindische Akhyâna,' Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, vol. xxxvii, and my Hymnen des Rig-veda, vol. i, pp. 26 seqq.
• The Trish/ubh and Gagatt offer a much less promising material for investigation, because, so far as can now be made out, the departures from the old type begin at a later period than in the case of the Anush/ubh.
• Compare Max Müller's introduction to his English translation of the Rigveda, vol. 1, pp. cxiv seq.
• To demonstrate this, I have given in my last-quoted paper, p. 62, statistics with regard to the two hymns, Rig-veda I, 10 and VIII, 8; in the former the iambic ending of the first pâda obtains in twenty out of twenty-four cases, in the latter in forty-two out of forty-six cases.
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