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INTRODUCTION.
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this,-there is no possibility whatever that he can have used the expression Åsvalâ yanasūtraka m' with regard to the Mahânâmnis; to apply the designation of a Satra to the Mahânâmní hymn would be no less absurd than to apply it to any Sakta whatever of the Rik-Samhita. On the other hand, the fifth book of the Åranyaka is a Satra ; it is the only part of the whole body of the Åranyaka collection which is composed in the Satra style. And it treats of a special part of the Rig-veda ritual the rest of which is embodied in its entirety, with the omission only of that very part, in the two great Satras of Åsvalâyana. There seems to me, therefore, to be little doubt as to the fifth Aranyaka really being the text referred to by Shadgurusishya, though I do not know how to explain his setting down this book as the fourth. And I may add that there is a passage, hitherto, as far as I know, unnoticed, in Sayana's Sâma-veda commentary, in which that author directly assigns the fifth Aranyaka not, as in the Rig-veda commentary, to Saunaka, but to Åsvalayana. Sâyana there says?: yathả bahvrikâm adhyâpakå mahavrataprayogapratipâdakam A svalâ yananirmitam kalpasatram aranye - dhiyamânâh panka mam aranyakam iti vedatvena vyavaharanti.
Instead of asserting, therefore, that of the two last Aranyakas of the Aitareyinas the one is ascribed to Saunaka, the other to Asvalâyana, we must state the case otherwise : not two Åranyakas were, according to Sâyana and Shadgurusishya, composed by those Sätrakaras, but one, viz. the fifth, which forms a sort of supplement to the great body of the Satras of that Karana, and which is ascribed either to Saunaka or to Asvalâyana. Perhaps further research will enable us to decide whether that Sátra portion of the Åranyaka, or we may say quite as well, that Åranyaka portion of the Satra, belongs to the author of the Srauta-sutra, or should be considered as a remnant of a more ancient composition, of which the portion studied in the forest has survived, while the portion
Såma-veda (Bibl. Indica), vol. I, p. 19.
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