Indian Antiquary Vol 24

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 70

66
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[MARCH, 1895.
first to introduce the Sanskrit language into the scholastic literature of the Svetîmbara Jains.40 By the "Six Systems" the Brahmans understand those we have just passed under review, the two Mimamsas, the Sankhya and the Yoga, the Nyâya and the Vai eshika. Haribhadra, on the other hand, if indeed the treatise be by him," expounds under this title very cortly (in 87 blokas), but quite impartially, the essential principles of the Baddhists, the Jainas, the followers of the Nyaya, the Sankhya, the Vaiseshika, and the Mimamsa. He thus selected his own school and those with whom the Jainas have bad the closest affinities, and puts them in between the schools of their greatest enemies, the Buddhists and the ritualists of the school of Jaimini. These last he couples with the Lokayatikas, the atheistic materialists, not simply from sectarian fanaticism and on his own judgment, but following an opinion that was then prevalent even among the Brahmans.
The bridge between speculation on the one hand, and ritual and custom on the other, is not so long in India as it is with us. Both disciplines make the claim to be founded on the Veda, with nearly the same justice in either case. On the Srauta Sátras, the texts which den! with the great solemn sacrifices, notices have been given above, under the Vedas to which they are connected. I have only now to mention, under this head, two works which have as their aim to comparative stndy of single points of this ritual according to the texts as a whole. Professor Hillebrandt, who takes up a clue, which he has followed before, has looked out for the traces, which the ancient festirals at the solstices have left in certain grent ceremonies of Brahmanism, the Sattras. These festivals must have been common to the Indo-European peoples, and this primitive community of origin may yet be discovered in several characteristic points where Germanic and Slavonie usages appear to coincide with Brahmanic prescriptions, As & general proposition Prof. Hillebrandt's argument is quite worthy of acceptance. It may very well be that the Brahmans have embodied ancient popular solemnities of this kind with their cyclic ceremonies, whatever doubt we may have as to the more theoretic than real existence of these long ceremonies. But, in detail, we think he has gone too far, and that we will do well to bear in mind the strictures passed in the Revue de l'histoire des Religions t3 by M. Sabbathier on some points of his theory. Apart from this theory, Prof. Hillebrandt's essay abounds in details of every kind on the constitution of the ancient ritual of the Brahman. Fuller still, and completer, but giving less room for hypothesis, is the monograph of Prof. Weber on the VAjapeya, a ceremony which included games, chariot races, and the drinking of surá, a highly intoxicating beverage, which even the highly developed ritual ordinauces were obliged to retain on this occasion, in spite of its prejudice in favour of temperance. Here, agnin, we have to do with a popular custom admitted into and modified by the sacerdotal Sástra, and Prof. Weber bas aulinirably shewn, how, from being a festival originally accompanying the election of a chief, it has finally become simply one of the forms of the soma sacrifice.
Under the rubric of domestic ritual and customary law, I must mention, first of all, the new edition of the DharmasQtrs of Åpastamba15 by Prof. Bühler, and that of the Gribya Satra of Hira yakoki, 46 by his pupil Prof. Kirste, These two works are a part of the stras of two very
10 On Haribhadra see Zeitschrift der den schen morgenländischen Gesellachaft, XLVI. (1892). p. 582.
41 The Shardariananas imchchaya of Haribhadra Súri, mentioned in the vijayana of the Vaideshikadardna (Benares Sai skpit Series, p. 13), seems to be a different work.
# Alfred Hillebrandt, Die Sonu mendfeste in All-Indien. Eine Untersuchu.g, Erlangen, 1889. 43 Tome XXIII. p. 221. ++ Albrecht Weber, Ueber den Vijapeya, from the Sitrungaberichte of the Berlin Academy, July 1892. Professor
axh to honour me by dedicating this essay to me, for which I beg to tender him this public expression of my warmest thanks.
45 G. Bubler, Aphorisms on the Sacred Law of the Hindur by A pastamba, alited with Eetracts from the Com. mentary, Second edition, revised, Part I. containity the Tazt, with critical Notes. an Indee of the Stras and the Various Readings of the Hiranyakati-Dharmastra, Bombay, 1892, forming No. XLIV. of the Bombay Sanskrit Series. The first edition appeared 1868-1871.
4* J. Kirate, The Grihyastra of Hiranya kesin, with Extracts from the Commentary of Mitridatta, Vienna, 1889, published by the Academy of Sciences of Vienna. Compare, by the same editor, Ein Gra..tha-Manuaript des Hiranya ketigrihyasatra in the Sitzungsberichte of the Academy of Vienne, 1691..