Grihya Sutras

Author(s): Hermann Oldenberg
Publisher: Oxford

Page 15

INTRODUCTION.
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sages. But whether the author of this passage really supposed this Gunâkhya Sânkhâyana to be the author of the Sankhayana-sûtras, or not, we shall be justified in following rather the unanimous statements of the texts previously quoted, and in accepting in accordance with them, as the full name of our Sûtrakâra, the name Suyagña Sâñkhâyana.
The Grihya-sutra which has been here translated presupposes, as all Grihya-sûtras do, the existence of the Srauta-sûtra, with which it is intimately connected and which is referred to in the Grihya in several instances1.
Here the question arises whether the Grihya-sûtra was composed by the same author to whom the authorship of the Srauta-sûtra belongs, so that the two texts form together, and would, in the conception of their author, be intended to form, one great body of Sûtras, or, on the other hand, whether the Grihya-sûtra is a later addition to the Srauta-sutra. On this question I have ventured, in the preface to my German edition of Sânkhâyana 2, to offer a few remarks which, however, I feel bound to say do not seem to myself quite decisive. I there pointed out that the Grihyasûtra contains a few aphorisms which we should rather expect would have found their place in the Srauta-sûtra, if the two texts were composed by the same author and on a common plan3. But, apart from the possibility that in a work of such considerable extent as that collection of Sûtras would be, such trifling incongruences or irregularities might very easily escape the attention even of a very careful author, there is still another objection that may be urged against the inference drawn by me from such passages. It can be shown that the Grihya texts which we possess are based to some extent on one common original, from which they have taken verbatim, or nearly verbatim, a certain number of aphorisms. Thus if we were to suppose that Sânkhâyana,
1 See, for instance, Grihya I, 16, 1 (Srauta IV, 16, 2).
Indische Studien, vol. xv, pp. 11, 12.
The Sûtras with reference to which I made that observation are I, 8, 14; 14, 13-15; II, 15, 10. Comp. Srauta-sûtra II, 7, 12; IV, 21.
I intend to give some proofs of this in the General Introduction to the Grihya-sûtras which will be given in the second volume of these translations.
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