Grihya Sutras

Author(s): Hermann Oldenberg
Publisher: Oxford

Page 21

INTRODUCTION,
11
furnish an important argument in favour of the same view with regard to the sixth book also. This view is furthermore supported by the opening invocation in that book, addressed to Brahman and to a number of mythological beings and Vedic sages and teachers. It is evident that by such an invocation this book is characterised as a separate treatise, presupposing of course the main body of the Sankhayana-sútras, but not forming part of it in the same sense in which, for instance, the second or the third Adhyâya does. The object of that treatise is the exposition of the ritual connected with the study of the Rahasya texts. The sixth book, composed no doubt by a later adherent of the Sankhâyana school, returns, in fact, to, and enlarges on, matters that have already found their proper place in the original Grihya-sátra at II, 12, and partly also at IV, 7.
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