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xxxviii
GRIHYA-SUTRAS.
other, or whether they have a common source which has been lost.
I will content myself with mentioning two such cases of agreement, in the one of which we can at least prove that a certain Sûtra cannot originally spring from one of the texts in which we find it, while in the other case we are able by means of a possibly not too uncertain conjecture to reconstruct the opening Sûtras of a lost Grihya-sûtra.
The description of the vrishotsarga (i. e. of the setting a bull at liberty) agrees almost word for word in the Sutras of Sankhayana (III, 11), Pâraskara (III, 9), and in the Kathaka-Grihya. In Sânkhayana we read:
§15: nabhyasthe-numantrayate mayobhûr ity anuvâka
seshena.
('When the bull is in the midst of the cows, he recites over them the texts "mayobhûh, &c.," down to the end of the Anuvâka.')
On the other hand in Pâraskara we have:
§7: nabhyastham abhimantrayate mayobhûr ity anuvâkaseshena.
('When the bull is in the midst of the cows, he recites over it the texts "mayobhûh, &c.," down to the end of the Anuvâka.')
The quotation mayo bhûh is clear, if we refer it to the Rig-veda. Hymn X, 169, which stands about in the middle of an Anuvâka, begins with this word1. On the other hand in the Vagasaneyi Samhitâ there is no Mantra beginning with Mayobhûh; we find this word in the middle of the Mantra XVIII, 45, and there follow verses whose use at the vrishotsarga would seem in part extremely strange. There can thus be no doubt that Pâraskara here borrowed from a Sûtra text belonging to the Rig-veda, a Pratîka, which, when referred to the Vâgasaneyi Samhitâ, results in
nonsense.
The other passage which I wish to discuss here is Pâra
In the Taittiriya Samhitâ (VII, 4, 17) mayobhûk is the beginning of an Anuvâka; the expression anuvâkaseshena would have no meaning if referred to this text.
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