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GRIHYA-SÛTRA OF GOBHILA.
examine into the relation in which the two texts, the Mantra-Brâhmana and the Gobhilîya-sætra, stand to each other. He has very kindly enabled me to make use, before they were published, of the results of his investigations, which he has laid down in the introduction to his translation of Gobhila. While I wish, therefore, to acknowledge the obligation under which Prof. Knauer has thus laid me, I must try, on the other side, to state my own opinion as to the problem in question, which in some points differs from, or is even opposed to, the theory by which Prof. Knauer has tried to solve it.
To begin with that side of the question regarding which there can scarcely be any doubt: it is certain, I believe, that Gobhila supposes the Mantra-Brâhmana to be known to the students of his Satra. The reasons which show this are obvious enough. By far the greater part of the Mantras of which Gobhila quotes the first words, are not found in the Såma-veda nor, for the most part, in any other Vedic Samhita, except in the Mantra-Brahmana, in which they stand in exactly the same order in which they are referred to by Gobhila. The descriptions of the Grihya sacrifices by Gobhila would have been meaningless and useless, and the sacrificer who had to perform his domestic ceremonies according to the ritual of Gobhila, would have been unable to do so, unless he had known those Mantras as contained in the Mantra-Brâhmana. And not only the Mantras, but also the order in which the Mantras stood, for Satras such as, for instance, Gobh. II, 1, 10 (With the two following verses he should wash,' &c.), would have no meaning except for one who had studied the Mantra-Brahmana which alone could show which the two following verses' were.
There are, consequently, two possibilities : either the Mantra-Brâhmana existed before the Gobhilîya-sútra, or the two works have been composed together and on one common plan. It is the first of these alternatives which Prof. Knauer maintains; I wish, on the other hand, to call
1 Cf, Knauer's Introduction, pp. 24, 31 seq.
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