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 516

xviii
GRIHYA-SUTRAS.
hidden, so that its existence can only be demonstrated by reasoning1.
But the Brahmana texts furnish us still in another way the most decisive arguments to prove that there have been no expositions of the Grihya ritual in Brâhmana form: they contain exceptionally and scattered through their mass sections, in which they treat of subjects which according to later custom would have been treated in the Grihya-sûtras. Precisely this sporadic appearance of Grihya chapters in the midst of expositions of a totally different contents leads us to draw the conclusion that literary compositions did not then exist, in which these chapters would have occupied their proper place as integral parts of a whole. Discussions of questions of Grihya ritual are found in the Brahmana literature, naturally enough in those appendices of various kinds which generally follow the exposition of the principal subject of the Srauta ritual. Accordingly we find in the eleventh book of the Satapatha Brahmana2, among the manifold additions to subjects previously treated, which make up the principal contents of this book 3, an exposition of the Upanayana, i. e. the solemn reception of the pupil by the teacher, who is to teach him the Veda. The way in which the chapter on the Upanayana is joined to the preceding one, is eminently characteristic; it shows that it is the merest accident which has brought about in that place the discussion of a subject connected with the Grihya ritual, and that a ceremony such as the Upanayana is properly not in its proper place in the midst of the literature of Brahmana texts. A dialogue (brahmodya) between Uddâlaka and Saukeya precedes; the two talk of the Agnihotra and of various expiations (prâyaskitta) connected with that sacrifice. At the end Saukeya, filled with astonishment at the wisdom of Uddâlaka, declares that he wishes to come to him as a pupil (upâyâni bhagavantam), and Uddâlaka
Max Müller, History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, pp. 94-96. "Satapatha Brahmana XI, 5, 4.
• Max Müller, History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 359.
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