{"collection":"Hinduism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/hin/sbe29/sbe29099.htm","path":"hin/sbe29/sbe29099.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/hin/sbe29/sbe29099.htm","text":"The Grihya Sutras, Part 1 (SBE29), by Hermann Oldenberg, [1886]\nMOST of the questions referring to the Grihya-s\u00fbtra of \u00c2sval\u00e2yana will be treated of more conveniently in connection with the different subjects which we shall have to discuss in our General Introduction to the Grihya-s\u00fbtras. Here I wish only to call attention to a well-known passage of Shadgurusishya, in which that commentator gives some statements on the works composed by \u00c2sval\u00e2yana and by his teacher Saunaka. As an important point in that passage has, as far as I can see, been misunderstood by several eminent scholars, I may perhaps be allowed here to try and correct that misunderstanding, though the point stands in a less direct connection with the Grihya-s\u00fbtra than with another side of the literary activity of \u00c2sval\u00e2yana.\nShadgurusishya 1, before speaking of \u00c2sval\u00e2yana, makes the following statements with regard to \u00c2sval\u00e2yana's teacher, Saunaka. 'There was,' he says, 'the S\u00e2kala Samhit\u00e2 (of the Rig-veda), and the B\u00e2shkala Samhit\u00e2; following these two Samhit\u00e2s and the twenty-one Br\u00e2hmanas, adopting principally the Aitareyaka and supplementing it by the other texts, he who was revered by the whole number of great Rishis composed the first Kalpa-s\u00fbtra.' He then goes on to speak of \u00c2sval\u00e2yana\u2014'Saunaka's pupil was the venerable \u00c2sval\u00e2yana. He who knew everything he had learnt from that teacher, composed a S\u00fbtra and announced (to Saunaka that he had done so) 2.' Saunaka then destroyed his own S\u00fbtra, and\ndetermined that \u00c2sval\u00e2yana's S\u00fbtra should be adopted by the students of that Vedic S\u00e2kh\u00e2. Thus, says Shadgurusishya, there were twelve works of Saunaka by which a correct knowledge of the Rig-veda was preserved, and three works of \u00c2sval\u00e2yana. Saunaka's dasa granth\u00e2s were, the five Anukraman\u00ees, the two Vidb\u00e2nas, the B\u00e2rhaddaivata, the Pr\u00e2tis\u00e2khya, and a Sm\u00e2rta work 1. \u00c2sval\u00e2yana, on the other hand, composed the Srauta-s\u00fbtra in twelve Adhy\u00e2yas, the Grihya in four Adhy\u00e2yas, and the fourth \u00c2ranyaka: this is \u00c2sval\u00e2yana's great S\u00fbtra composition 2.\nHere we have an interesting and important statement by which the authorship of a part of the Aitarey\u00e2ranyaka, which would thus be separated from the rest of that text, is ascribed, not to Mahid\u00e2sa Aitareya, but to an author of what may be called the historical period of Vedic antiquity, to \u00c2sval\u00e2yana.\nBut what is the fourth \u00c2ranyaka to which this passage refers? Is it the text which is now set down, for instance, in Dr. R\u00e2gendral\u00e2la Mitra's edition, as the fourth \u00c2ranyaka of the Aitareyinas?\nBefore we give an answer to this question, attention must be called to other passages referring, as it could seem, to another part, namely, the fifth part of the \u00c2ranyaka.\nS\u00e2yana, in his great commentary on the Rig-veda, very frequently quotes the pa\u00f1kam\u00e2ranyaka as belonging to Saunaka. Thus in vol. i, p. 112, ed. Max M\u00fcller, he says: pa\u00f1kam\u00e2ranyaka aushnihatrik\u00e2s\u00eetir iti khande Saunakena s\u00fbtritam sur\u00fbpakritnum \u00fbtaya iti tr\u00eeny endra s\u00e2nasim rayim iti dve iti. There is indeed in the fifth \u00c2ranyaka a chapter beginning with the words aushnihi trik\u00e2s\u00eetih, in which the words quoted by S\u00e2yana occur 3. Similar quotations, in\nwhich the fifth \u00c2ranyaka is assigned to Saunaka, are found in S\u00e2yana's commentary on the \u00c2ranyaka itself; see, for instance, p. 97, line 19, p. 116, line 3.\nThus it seems that the authorship of both the fourth and the fifth \u00c2ranyaka was ascribed to teachers belonging to the S\u00fbtra period of Vedic literature, viz. to Saunaka and to \u00c2sval\u00e2yana respectively. And so we find the case stated by both Professor Weber, in his 'Vorlesungen \u00fcber indische Literaturgeschichte 1,' and Dr. R\u00e2gendral\u00e2la Mitra, in the Introduction to his edition of the Aitareya \u00c2ranyaka 2.\nBut we must ask ourselves: Are the two books of the \u00c2ranyaka collection, ascribed to those two authors, really two different books? It is a surprising fact that Shadgurusishya, while speaking of \u00c2sval\u00e2yana's authorship of the fourth book, and while at the same time intending, as he evidently does, to give a complete list of Saunaka's compositions, does not mention the fifth \u00c2ranyaka among the works of that author. In order to account for this omission the conjecture seems to suggest itself that Shadgurusishya, when speaking of the fourth \u00c2ranyaka as belonging to \u00c2sval\u00e2yana, means the same work which S\u00e2yana sets down as the fifth, and which he ascribes to Saunaka. At first sight this conjecture may seem perhaps rather hazardous or unnatural; however I believe that, if we compare the two texts themselves which are concerned, we shall find it very probable and even evident. What do those two \u00c2ranyaka books contain? The fourth is very short: it does not fill more than one page in the printed edition. Its contents consist exclusively of the text of the Mah\u00e2n\u00e2mn\u00ee or Sakvar\u00ee verses, which seem to belong to a not less remote\nantiquity than the average of the Rig-veda hymns. They can indeed be considered as forming part of the Rig-veda Samhit\u00e2, and it is only on account of the peculiar mystical holiness ascribed to these verses, that they were not studied in the village but in the forest 1, and were consequently received not into the body of the Samhit\u00e2 itself, but into the \u00c2ranyaka. They are referred to in all Br\u00e2hmana texts, and perhaps we can even go so far as to pronounce our opinion that some passages of the Rig-veda hymns themselves allude to the Sakvar\u00ee verses:\nSo much for the fourth \u00c2ranyaka. The fifth contains a description of the Mah\u00e2vrata ceremony. To the same subject also the first book is devoted, with the difference that the first book is composed in the Br\u00e2hmana style, the fifth in the S\u00fbtra style 2.\nNow which of these two books can it be that Shadgurusishya reckons as belonging to the '\u00c2sval\u00e2yanas\u00fbtraka?' It is impossible that it should be the fourth, for the Mah\u00e2n\u00e2mn\u00ee verses never were considered by Indian theologians as the work of a human author; they shared in the apaurusheyatva of the Veda, and to say that they have been composed by \u00c2sval\u00e2yana, would be inconsistent with the most firmly established principles of the literary history of the Veda both as conceived by the Indians and by ourselves. And even if we were to admit that the Mah\u00e2n\u00e2mn\u00ee verses can have been assigned, by an author like Shadgurusishya, to \u00c2sval\u00e2yana,\u2014and we cannot admit\nthis,\u2014there is no possibility whatever that he can have used the expression '\u00c2sval\u00e2yanas\u00fbtrakam' with regard to the Mah\u00e2n\u00e2mn\u00ees; to apply the designation of a S\u00fbtra to the Mah\u00e2n\u00e2mn\u00ee hymn would be no less absurd than to apply it to any S\u00fbkta whatever of the Rik-Samhit\u00e2. On the other hand, the fifth book of the \u00c2ranyaka is a S\u00fbtra; it is the only part of the whole body of the \u00c2ranyaka collection which is composed in the S\u00fbtra style. And it treats of a special part of the Rig-veda ritual the rest of which is embodied in its entirety, with the omission only of that very part, in the two great S\u00fbtras of \u00c2sval\u00e2yana. There seems to me, therefore, to be little doubt as to the fifth \u00c2ranyaka really being the text referred to by Shadgurusishya, though I do not know how to explain his setting down this book as the fourth. And I may add that there is a passage, hitherto, as far as I know, unnoticed, in S\u00e2yana's S\u00e2ma-veda commentary, in which that author directly assigns the fifth \u00c2ranyaka not, as in the Rig-veda commentary, to Saunaka, but to \u00c2sval\u00e2yana. S\u00e2yana there says 1: yath\u00e2 bahvrik\u00e2m adhy\u00e2pak\u00e2 mah\u00e2vrataprayogapratip\u00e2dakam \u00c2sval\u00e2yananirmitam kalpas\u00fbtram aranye\u093ddh\u00eeyam\u00e2n\u00e2h pa\u00f1kamam \u00e2ranyakam iti vedatvena vyavaharanti.\nInstead of asserting, therefore, that of the two last \u00c2ranyakas of the Aitareyinas the one is ascribed to Saunaka, the other to \u00c2sval\u00e2yana, we must state the case otherwise: not two \u00c2ranyakas were, according to S\u00e2yana and Shadgurusishya, composed by those S\u00fbtrak\u00e2ras, but one, viz. the fifth, which forms a sort of supplement to the great body of the S\u00fbtras of that Karana, and which is ascribed either to Saunaka or to \u00c2sval\u00e2yana. Perhaps further research will enable us to decide whether that S\u00fbtra portion of the \u00c2ranyaka, or we may say quite as well, that \u00c2ranyaka portion of the S\u00fbtra, belongs to the author of the Srauta-s\u00fbtra, or should be considered as a remnant of a more ancient composition, of which the portion studied in the forest has survived, while the portion\nwhich was taught in the village was superseded by the more recent \u00c2sval\u00e2yana-s\u00fbtra.\nThere would be still many questions with which an Introduction to \u00c2sval\u00e2yana would have to deal; thus the relation between \u00c2sval\u00e2yana and Saunaka, which we had intended to treat of here with reference to a special point, would have to be further discussed with regard to several other of its bearings, and the results which follow therefrom as to the position of \u00c2sval\u00e2yana in the history of Vedic literature would have to be stated. But we prefer to reserve the discussion of these questions for the General Introduction to the Grihya-s\u00fbtras.\n153:1 See Max M\u00fcller's History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, pp. 230 seqq.; Indische Studien, I, 102.\n153:2 This seems to me to be the meaning of s\u00fbtram kritv\u00e2 nyavedayat; p. 154 the case is similar to that where a pupil goes on his rounds for alms and announces (nivedayati) to his teacher what he has received. Prof. Max M\u00fcller translates these words differently; according to him they mean that \u00c2sval\u00e2yana 'made a S\u00fbtra and taught it.'\n154:1 Comp. Prof. B\u00fchler's article in the Journal As. Soc. of Bengal, 1866, pp. 149 seqq.\n154:2 Dv\u00e2das\u00e2dhy\u00e2yakam s\u00fbtram katushkam grihyam eva ka katurth\u00e2ranyakam keti hy \u00c2sval\u00e2yanas\u00fbtrakam.\n154:3 See p. 448 of Dr. R\u00e2gendral\u00e2la Mitra's edition in the Bibliotheca Indica.\n155:1 2nd edition, p. 53: Obwohl wir f\u00fcr das vierte Buch des letztern (i.e. of the Aitareya \u00c2ranyaka) sogar die directe Nachricht haben, dass es dem \u00c2sval\u00e2yana, dem Sch\u00fcler eines Saunaka angeh\u00f6rt, so wie auch ferner f\u00fcr das f\u00fcnfte Buch desselben dieser Saunaka selbst als Urheber gegolten zu haben scheint, nach dem was Colebrooke Misc. Ess. I, 47 n. dar\u00fcber berichtet.\n155:2 P. 11: If this assumption be admitted, the proper conclusion to be arrived at would also be that the whole of the fifth Book belongs to Saunaka, and the whole of the fourth Book to \u00c2sval\u00e2yana. P. 12: The writings of both \u00c2sval\u00e2yana and Saunaka which occur in the \u00c2ranyaka, etc.\n156:1 See S\u00e2\u1e45kh\u00e2yana-Grihya II, 12, 13.\n156:2 Thus S\u00e2yana, in his note on V, 1, 1, says: Nanu pratham\u00e2ranyake\u093dpi atha mah\u00e2vratam Indro vai Vritram hatvety\u00e2din\u00e2 mah\u00e2vrataprayogo\u093dbhihitah, pa\u00f1kame\u093dpi tasyaiv\u00e2bhidh\u00e2ne punaruktih sy\u00e2t. n\u00e2yam doshah, s\u00fbtrabr\u00e2hmanar\u00fbpena tayor vibhed\u00e2t. pa\u00f1kam\u00e2ranyakam rishiproktam s\u00fbtram, pratham\u00e2ranyakan tv apaurusheyam br\u00e2hmanam. ata eva tatr\u00e2rthav\u00e2daprapa\u00f1kena sahit\u00e2 vidhayah sr\u00fbyante, pa\u00f1kame tu na ko py arthav\u00e2do\u093dsti . . . . aranya evaitad adhyeyam ity abhiprety\u00e2dhyet\u00e2ra \u00e2ranyakande\u093dntarbh\u00e2vy\u00e2dh\u00eeyate.\n157:1 S\u00e2ma-veda (Bibl. Indica), vol. i, p. 19.","title":"Grihya Sutras, Part 1 (SBE29): \u00c2sval\u00e2yana-Grihya-S\u00fbtra: Introduction","type":"page"}