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xxxii
GRIHYA-SOTRAS.
direction, that e.g. it should designate Paraskara as author when Katyayana himself was the author.
We shall not be able to trust so implicitly to tradition where it puts down the same author for the Grihya-sútra as for the corresponding Srauta-sútra; the possibility that such data are false is so large that we have to treat them as doubtful so long as we have not discovered certain proofs of their correctness. At present, so far as I can see, we are just as little justified in considering that such a proof has been made as we are able to prove the opposite state of things. It is easy to find the many agreements in contents and expression which exist, for instance, between the Srautasätra and Grihya-sútra of Sankhayana, or between the Srauta-sâ tra and the Grihya-sätra of Åsvalayana. But these agreements cannot be considered as sufficient proof that in each case the Grihya-sätra and the Srauta-sätra are by the same author. Even if the author of the Grihya-sútra was not Åsvaldyana or Sankhåyana in person, still he must have been at all events perfectly familiar with the works of those teachers, and must have intended to fit his work to theirs as closely as possible, so that agreements of this kind can in no way astonish us. On the other hand, if the Srauta-sđtras and Grihya-stras are read together, it is easy to discover small irregularities in the exposition, repetitions and such like, which might seem to indicate different authors. But the irregularities of this kind which have been detected up to the present are scarcely of such
1 The parallel passages from the Srauta-sätra and the Gribya-sútra of the Mânavas are brought together in Dr. Von Bradke's interesting paper, Ueber das Månava-Grihya-satra,' Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländ. Gesellschaft, vol. XXXVI, p. 451.
· For this reason I cannot accept the reasoning through which Prof. Bühler (Sacred Books of the East, vol. ii, p. xiv) attempts to prove the identity of the author of the Srauta-sätra and of the Dharma-sätra of the Åpastambiya school. Bühler seems to assume that the repetition of the same Sútra, and of the same irregular grammatical form in the Srauta-sútra and in the Dharma-stra, must either be purely accidental, or, if this is impossible, that it proves the identity of the authors. But there remains a third possible explanation, that the two texts are by different authors, one of whom knows and imitates the style of the other.
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