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INTRODUCTION
TO THE
GR/HYA-SUTRA OF GOBHILA.
THE Grihya-sûtra of Gobhila differs from those of Sânkhâyana, Asvalâyana, Pâraskara, Hiranyakesin in one essential point: while these texts presuppose only the same Vedic Samhitâs on which also the corresponding Srautasûtras are based, viz. the Rig-veda-Samhitâ, the VâgasaneyiSamhitâ, and the Taittirîya-Samhita; the Sûtra of Gobhila, on the other hand, presupposes, beside the Samhitâ of the Sâma-veda1, another collection of Mantras which evidently was composed expressly with the purpose of being used at Grihya ceremonies: this collection is preserved to us under the title of the Mantra-Brâhmana, and it has been edited at Calcutta (1873), with a commentary and Bengali translation by Satyavrata Sâmasramin 2.
Prof. Knauer of Kiew, to whom all students of the Grihya literature are highly indebted for his very accurate edition and translation of Gobhila, has been the first to
The term 'Samhitâ of the Sâma-veda' ought to be understood here in its narrower sense as denoting the so-called first book of the Samhitâ, the Khanda-ârkika or collection of Yoni verses (see on the relation between this collection and the second book my remarks in the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, vol. xxxviii, pp. 464 seq.). Prof. Knauer in his list of the verses quoted by Gobhila (p. 29 of his translation of the GobhiliyaGrihya) states that Sâma-veda II, 1138 (=I, 276) and 1139 is quoted in Gobhila III, 9, 6, but an accurate analysis of the words of Gobhila shows that the verse II, 1139 is not referred to, so that only the verse II, 1138 remains, which occurs also in the first book of the Samhita. The 'dvika' of which Gobhila speaks in that Sûtra is not a dvrika, but, as the commentators rightly understand it (see Knauer's edition of the text, p. xii), it is a dyad of Sâmans or melodies, the two Kâvasha Sâmans which are based on the text I, 276, and are given in the great Sâma-veda edition of Satyavrata Sâmasramin, vol. i, pp. 566, 567.
In the same way the Grihya-sutra of Apastamba stands in connection with a similar collection of Grihya verses and formulas, the Apastamblya-Mantrapâlha.
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