Page Text
________________
GRIHYA-SUTRA OF GOBHILA.
It appears then, that allowance must be made for a certain inconsistency or carelessness in the distribution of the material between the two texts: and such an assumption will easily be allowed by any one who does not entertain very exaggerated ideas as to the care and reflection which presided over the composition of the Sûtra texts.
I will add only a few words concerning a second Grihya ceremony, which calls for the same sort of comment as the rites which have just been discussed. For the offering on the day of the full moon, Gobhila prescribes (III, 8, 2) first the verse â no mitrâvarunâ, second the verse mâ nas toke. The Mantra-Brâhmana (II, 1, 8) has the second of these verses only, not the first: conversely, the first verse alone, and not the second, is to be found in the Samhitâ of the Sâma-veda (I, 220). We could hardly assume, as I think, that the Mantra-Brâhmana presupposed another form of the rite differing from Gobhila's; we should be much more inclined to consider the leaving out of that matter, which was contained in other texts of the Sâma-veda, as a proof that the compiler of the Mantra-Brahmana assumed that those texts were known 1.
8
And this brings me to one of Prof. Knauer's conjectures concerning the Mantra-Brahmana which I have not yet touched. According to tradition we consider the MantraBrahmana as belonging to the Sâma-veda; in the Calcutta edition it is designated as the Sâma-vedasya MantraBrahmanam.' Prof. Knauer thinks that it is doubtful whether the Mantra-Brâhmana belonged to the Sâma-veda originally. He conjectures2 'that it existed already in the
1 Any one who holds the view that the ritualistic formulas, which are not contained in the Mantra-Brâhmana, represent later extensions of the ceremonies in question, will do well to notice how any one of the offerings of the Srauta ritual which we possess, both in the old description of the Samhitâ and Brahmana texts, and in the more recent description of the Sûtra texts, Mantras have been added in more recent times to the former ones. I think that it would be difficult to draw from such observations any argument of analogy calculated to support Dr. Knauer's opinion as to the relation of the Mantras in Gobhila and in the Mantra-Brahmana.
Introduction to his translation, p. 23.
Digitized by
Google
| 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 |