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INTRODUCTION.
xxi
in the last sections of the Satapatha Brahmana, there is a rather long section, which also really belongs to the Grihya domain. To quote from this section' : 'If a man wishes that a learned son should be born to him, famous, a public man, a popular speaker, that he should know all the Vedas, and that he should live to his full age, then, after having prepared boiled rice with meat and butter, they should both eat, being fit to have offspring,' &c. Then follows a description of an Agya offering, after which the marital cohabitation is to be performed with certain formulas. This, however, is not the last of the acts through which the father assures himself of the possession of such a distinguished son; certain rites follow, which are to be performed at birth and after birth, the Ayushya ceremony and the Medhåganana. These rites are here prescribed for the special case where the father has the above-mentioned wishes for the prosperity of his child; but the description agrees essentially with the description of the corresponding acts in the Grihya-sætras, which are inculcated for all cases, without reference to a determined wish of the father. It is a justifiable conjecture that, although this certainly does not apply to the whole of ceremonies described in the Grihya-stras, many portions of these ceremonies and verses that were used in connection with them, &c., were first developed, not as a universal rite or duty, but as the special possession of individuals, who hoped to attain special goods and advantages by performing the ceremony in this way.
It was only later, as I think, that such prescriptions
Satapatha Brahmana XIV, 9, 4, 17 - Bribad Aranyaka VI, 4, 18 (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xv, p. 119 seq.).
* Cf. Prof. Max Müller's notes to the passage quoted from the Brihad Aranyaka. I must mention in this connection a point touched upon by Prof. Müller, loc. cit. p. 222, note 1, viz. that Asvaldyana, Grihya I, 13, 1, expressly calls
the Upanishad' the text in which the Pumsavana and similar ceremonies are treated. It is probable that the Upanishad which Asvalâyana had in mind treated these rites not as a duty to which all were bound, but as a secret that assured the realisation of certain wishes. This follows from the character of the Upanishads, which did not form a part of the Vedic course which all had to study, but rather contained a secret doctrine intended for the few.
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