Indian Antiquary Vol 24

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

Page 71

MARCH, 1895.)
BULLETIN OF THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA.
67
nearly allied schools connected with the Black Yajus of the Taittiriyas. Large parts of their sátras are common. By noting the variants, for example, Prof. Bühler has been able to make his edition of the dharmasritra of the one school at the same time serve as an edition of that of the other school. In his preface the reader will find new information as to important readings in the text of  pastamba and the commentaries. To these texts may be added the Karmapradipa, the first chapter of which Dr. Schrader has published and translated. 47 This is a Griya ritual in general, but following more particularly the sutra of Gobhila (Samaveda), though it has also been assigned to the Rik and more especially to the White Yajus. It has even been attributed to Katyayana, the author of the Srautasiltrus of that Veda. Dr. Knager had before supplied some useful information on this treatise, and it seems to be older than the supplement to the sútras of Gobhila mentioned above.
Professor Oldenberg hes published a second volume of his translation into English of the Grihyasútras, containing Gobhila, Hiranya kesin, and A pastamba. The collection now embraces all the texts that have been published, and the translator bas been in a position to add his general introduction. Up to the end of his task the translator has managed to combine exactness, completeness, and, what is more, originality in a theme that has been so often treated before. In the introdaction, for instance, the reader will hardly find a single instance of mere repetition of old facte, and yet no essential point has been omitted, and though in his results the author arrives at the same conclusions as his predecessors he has done so by his own methods. For example, by examining the metre, he has been enabled to fix precisely in a novel and ingenious manner the place of these sritras in Vedic literature. The practices which they prescribe are, in grent part, clearly of very great antiquity, since we meet with them in many instances and with striking resemblances in their details among other Indo-European peoples. Several of them are mentioned even in the Brahmanas. But, before these stras, there were no hand-books for this part of the ritual, as there were for the more complicated ritual of the great sacrifices. Till then these nsages had been handed down by tradition, not by formal instruction. In other terms, the Griyasútras are smartas not árurtas, and deal with custom and not with doctrine. A very complete synoptical table of the subjects treated of in these texts is added to the volume, which ends with the translation of the Yajnaparibhdshisútras of Åpastam ba made by Prof. M. Müller and mentioned before. Drs. Caland and Winternitz deal with special points of this ritual, the former with the worship of the dead, and the other with the marriage ceremonies,50 and they have studied them from the comparative point of view, by bringing them into connexion with analogous customs which have been observed among other peoples. Professor Kirste has also made a comparative study of one of these points, by putting the ceremony of shaving the head of children among the Hindus alongside of a very similar practice still observed by the South Slavonic nationalities. The resemblance may be close, but I doubt if the explanation of the asage proposed by Prof. Kirste is convincing.
+ Friedrich Schrader, Der Karmapradipo, I. Prapathaka mit Auszügen aus dem Kommentare des Asůrka, her. ausgegeben tud überautzt. Halle, 1889.
43 Hermann Oldenberg, The Grihya-sútras, Rules of Velic Domestic Ceremonies, translated, Purt II. Gobhila, Hiranyake ire, Apastomba. Yajiaparibhaahd-sitrus, translatoul by F. Max Miller, Oxford, 1892, forming Vol. XXX. of the Sacrel Books of the East.
w. (aland, Uber Totenverehrung bei einigen der Indo-germanischen Völker, Amsterdam, 1888, in the Proceed. ing of the Academy of Amsterdam. Cf. M. Winternits, Notes on Sraddhas and Ancestral Worship among the IndoEiropea ratione, In Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde die Morgenlander, IV. (1890) p. 199. The dissertntion of Prof. Kaegi, Thin Norwahl bei den Oxtariern, Kulturhistoriche Auslekten, from the Philologische Abhanullweger für Heinrich Schweiser. Sidlor, 1892, boars also in great part on the comparative study of funeral ages.
0 M. Winternita. Dar altidiscbe Hochzeitsrituell nach dem Apontambiya-Grily aitra, und einigen anderen verioandten Werken. Mit Vergleichung der Hochzeitsgebräuche bei den abrigen Indogermanischen Völkern, Vienna, 1892, in the Denkschriften of the Academy of Vienna. Compare by the fame autbor, A Comparative Study of indo European Customs, with special reference to the Marriage Customs in the Transactions of the International Folk.lore Congress, 1891, London, 1892.
51 J. Kirste, Indogermanische Gebrünche beim Haarschneiden in the Analecta Graecensia, Festa'rift zum 12. Philologentage in Wien 1898.