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INTRODUCTION

TO THE

GRIHYA-SÛTRAS.

We begin our introductory remarks on the literature of the Grihya-sûtras with the attempt to collect the more important data which throw light on the development of the Grihya ritual during the oldest period of Hindu antiquity.

There are, as it seems, no direct traces of the Grihya ceremonies in the most ancient portion of Vedic literature. It is certain indeed that a number of the most important of those ceremonies are contemporaneous with or even earlier than the most ancient hymns of the Rig-veda, as far as their fundamental elements and character are concerned, whatever their precise arrangement may have been. However, in the literature of the oldest period they play no part. It was another portion of the ritual that attracted the attention of the poets to whom we owe the hymns to Agni, Indra, and the other deities of the Vedic Olympus, viz. the offerings of the Srauta-Ritual with their far superior pomp, or, to state the matter more precisely, among the offerings of the Srauta-Ritual the Soma offering. In the Soma offering centred the thought, the poetry, and we may almost say the life of the Vasishthas, of the Visvâmitras, &c., in whose families the poetry of the Rig-veda had its home. We may assume that the acts of the Grihya worship, being more limited in extent and simpler in their ritual construction than the great Soma offerings, were not yet at that time, so far as they existed at all, decked out with the reciting of the poetic texts, which we find later on connected with them, and which in the case of the Soma offering came early to be used. Probably they were celebrated in simple unadorned fashion;

1. We think that the character of the verses given in the Grihya-sûtras, which had to be repeated at the performance of the different ceremonies, justifies us in making these conjectures. Some of these verses indeed are old Vedic verses, but we have no proof that they were composed for the purposes of the Grihya ceremonies, and the connection in which we find them in the Rig-veda proves rather the contrary. Another portion of these verses and songs proves to have been composed indeed for the very Grihya ceremonies for which they are prescribed in the texts of the ritual: but these verses are more recent than the old parts of the Rig-veda. Part of them are found in the Rig-veda in a position which speaks for their more recent origin, others are not contained in the Rig-veda at all. Many of these verses are found in the more recent Vedic Samhitâs, especially in the Atharva-veda Samhitâ which may be regarded in the main as a treasure of Grihya verses; others finally have not as yet been traced to any Vedic Samhitâ, and we know them from the Grihya-sûtras only. We may infer that, during the latter part of the Rig-veda period, ceremonies such as marriage and burial began to be decked out with poetry as had long been the case with the Soma offering. The principal collection of marriage sentences 2 and the sentences for the

1 are found in the tenth Mandala of the Rig-veda, which, for the most part, is known to be of later origin than the preceding portions of the collections 2. If we look into the character of the verses, which these long Grihya songs are composed of, we shall find additional grounds for assuming their early origin. A few remarks about their metrical character will make this clear 3. There is no other metre in which the contrast between the early and later periods of Vedic literature manifests itself so clearly as in the Anushtubh-metre 4. The Anushtubh hemistich consists of sixteen syllables, which are divided by the caesura into two halves of eight syllables each. The second of these halves has as a rule the iambic ending ( ), though this rule was not so strictly carried out in the early as in the later period 5. The iambic ending is also the rule in the older parts of the Veda for the close of the first half, i.e. for the four syllables before the caesura 6. We know that the later prosody, as we see it in certain late parts of Vedic literature, in the Pâli Pitakas of the Buddhists, and later in the great epic poems, not only departs from the usage of the older period, but adopts a directly contrary course, i.e. the iambic ending of the first pâda, which was formerly the rule, is not allowed at all later, and instead of it the prevailing ending is the antispast ( ) It goes without saying that such a change in metrical usage, as the one just described, cannot have

) and the antispastic ( ), are those that occur most frequently in the intermediate period, but besides them all other possible forms are allowed 1.

This is precisely the stage of metrical development which the great Grihya songs of the tenth Mandala of the Rig-veda have reached. Let us consider, for instance, the marriage songs and the marriage sayings, X, 85, and see what kind of ending there is at the end of the first pâda. Of the first seventeen verses of this Sûkta sixteen are in Anushtubh metre (verse 14 is Trishtubh); we have therefore thirty-two cases in which the metrical form of these syllables must be investigated. The quantity of the syllable immediately preceding the caesura being a matter of indifference, we have not sixteen but only eight a priori possible combinations for the form of the last four syllables of the pâda; I give each of these forms below, adding each time in how many of the thirty-two cases it is used:

1.

A hasty glance suffices to show that those verses of the Grihya ritual which do not appear in the Samhitâs, but which are quoted at full length in the Grihya-sûtras, are also in the same stage. For instance, the seven Anushtubh verses which are quoted Sâṅkhâyana-Grihya I, 19, 5. 6, give us the following relations, if we investigate them as we did those in Rig-veda X, 85:

Thus even the small number of fourteen hemistichs is enough to give us seven of the eight existing combinations, and no single one occurs at all often enough to allow us to call it predominant.

Or we may take the saying that accompanies the performance of the medhâganana on the new-born child. In the version of Âsvalâyana 2 we have:

In the version adopted in the school of Gobhila 3 the

Or the saying with which the pupil (brahmakârin) has to lay a log of wood on the fire of the teacher 1:

There would be no object in multiplying the number of examples; those here given are sufficient to prove our proposition, that the development of the Grihya rites in the form in which they are described to us in the Sûtras, that especially their being accompanied with verses, which were to be recited by their performance, is later than the time of the oldest Vedic poetry, and coincides rather with the transition period in the development of the Anushtubh metre, a period which lies between the old Vedic and the later Buddhistic and epic form.

Besides the formulae intended to be recited during the performance of the various sacred acts, the Grihya-sûtras contain a second kind of verses, which differ essentially from the first kind in regard to metre; viz. verses of ritualistic character, which are inserted here and there between the prose Sûtras, and of which the subject-matter is similar to that of the surrounding prose. We shall have to consider these yagñagâthâs, as they are occasionally called, later; at present let us go on looking for traces of the Grihya ritual and for the origin of Grihya literature in the literature which precedes the Sûtras.

The Brâhmana texts, which, as a whole, have for their subject-matter the Vaitânika ceremonies celebrated with the three holy fires, furnish evidence that the Grihya fire, together with the holy acts accomplished in connection with it, were also already known. The Aitareya-Brâhmana 2 gives this

1. We often find in the Brâhmana texts also mention of the terminus technicus, which the Grihya-sûtras use many times as a comprehensive term for the offerings connected with Grihya ritual, the word pâkayagña 2. For instance, the Satapatha Brâhmana 3, in order to designate the whole body of offerings, uses the expression: all offerings, those that are Pâkayagñas and the others. It is especially common to find the Pâkayagñas mentioned in the Brâhmana texts in connection with the myth of Manu. The Taittirîya Samhitâ 4 opposes the whole body of sacrifices to the Pâkayagñas. The former belonged to the gods, who through it attained to the heavenly world; the latter concerned Manu: thus the goddess Idâ turned to him. Similar remarks, bringing Manu or the goddess Idâ into relation with the Pâkayagñas, are to be found Taittirîya Samhitâ VI, 2, 5, 4; Aitareya-Brâhmana III, 40, 2. However, in this case as in many others, the Satapatha Brâhmana contains the most detailed data, from which we see how the idea of Manu as the performer of Pâkayagñas is connected with the history of the great deluge, out of which Manu alone was left. We read in the Satapatha Brâhmana 5:

1. Purûravas is the son of Idâ; the original man Manu, who brings forth Idâ through his offering, cannot have made use of a form of offering which presupposes the existence of Idâ, and which moreover is based on the triad of the sacred fires introduced by Purûravas; hence Manu's offering must have been a Pâkayagña; we read in one of the Grihya-sûtras 2: 'All Pâkayagñas are performed without Idâ.'

There are still other passages in the Brâhmana texts showing that the Grihya offerings were already known; I will mention a saying of Yâgñavalkya's reported in the Satapatha Brâhmana 3: he would not allow that the daily morning and evening offering was a common offering, but said that, in a certain measure, it was a Pâkayagña. Finally I would call attention to the offering prescribed in the last book of the Satapatha Brâhmana 4 for the man 'who wishes that a learned son should be born to him;' it is there stated that the preparation of the Âgya (clarified butter) should be performed 'according to the rule of the Sthâlîpâka (pot-boiling),' and the way in which the offering is to

1, which often occurs in the Grihya literature in a technical sense.

We thus see that the Brâhmana books are acquainted with the Grihya fire, and know about the Grihya offerings and their permanent technical peculiarities; and it is not merely the later portions of the Brâhmana works such as the fourteenth book of the Satapatha Brâhmana, in which we meet with evidence of this kind; we find it also in portions against the antiquity of which no objections can be raised.

While therefore on the one hand the Brâhmana texts prove the existence of the Grihya ceremonial, we see on the other hand, and first of all by means of the Brâhmana texts themselves, that a literary treatment of this ritualistic subject-matter, as we find it in the Brâhmanas themselves with regard to the Srauta offerings, cannot then have existed. If there had existed texts, similar to the Brâhmana texts preserved to us, which treated of the Grihya ritual, then, even supposing the texts themselves had disappeared, we should still necessarily find traces of them in the Brâhmanas and Sûtras. He who will take the trouble to collect in the Brâhmana texts the scattered references to the then existing literature, will be astonished at the great mass of notices of this kind that are preserved: but nowhere do we find traces of Grihya Brâhmanas. And besides, if such works had ever existed, we should be at a loss to understand the difference which the Hindus make between the Srauta-sûtras based on Sruti (revelation), and the Grihya-sûtras resting on Smriti (tradition) alone 2. The sacred Grihya acts are regarded as 'smârta,' and when the question is raised with what right they can be considered as a duty resting on the sacrificer alongside of the Srauta acts, the answer is given that they too are based on a Sâkhâ of the Veda, but that this Sâkhâ is

1.

But the Brâhmana texts furnish us still in another way the most decisive arguments to prove that there have been no expositions of the Grihya ritual in Brâhmana form: they contain exceptionally and scattered through their mass sections, in which they treat of subjects which according to later custom would have been treated in the Grihya-sûtras. Precisely this sporadic appearance of Grihya chapters in the midst of expositions of a totally different contents leads us to draw the conclusion that literary compositions did not then exist, in which these chapters would have occupied their proper place as integral parts of a whole. Discussions of questions of Grihya ritual are found in the Brâhmana literature, naturally enough in those appendices of various kinds which generally follow the exposition of the principal subject of the Srauta ritual. Accordingly we find in the eleventh book of the Satapatha Brâhmana 2, among the manifold additions to subjects previously treated, which make up the principal contents of this book 3, an exposition of the Upanayana, i.e. the solemn reception of the pupil by the teacher, who is to teach him the Veda. The way in which the chapter on the Upanayana is joined to the preceding one, is eminently characteristic; it shows that it is the merest accident which has brought about in that place the discussion of a subject connected with the Grihya ritual, and that a ceremony such as the Upanayana is properly not in its proper place in the midst of the literature of Brâhmana texts. A dialogue (brahmodya) between Uddâlaka and Saukeya precedes; the two talk of the Agnihotra and of various expiations (prâyaskitta) connected with that sacrifice. At the end Saukeya, filled with astonishment at the wisdom of Uddâlaka, declares that he wishes to come to him as a pupil (upâyâni bhagavantam), and Uddâlaka

1. The subject is there treated in the peculiar style of the Brâhmana texts, a style which we need not characterize here. I shall only mention one point, viz. that into the description and explanation of the Upanayana ceremony has been inserted one of those Slokas, such as we often find in the Grihya-sûtras also, as a sort of ornamental amplification of the prose exposition 2. 'Here a Sloka is also sung,' says the Brâhmana 3:

5 Slokas explaining certain points of the Grihya ritual goes back to quite an early period; on the other hand, we are compelled to assume that the Slokas of this kind which are quoted in the Grihya-sûtras differ nevertheless from the analogous Slokas of the early period, or at any rate that the old Slokas must have undergone a change which modernized their structure, so as to be received into the Grihya-sûtras; for the metre of the Sloka just quoted, which has the antispast before the caesura in neither of its two halves, and which has even a double iambus before the caesura in one half, is decidedly of an older type than the one peculiar to the Slokas quoted in the Grihya-sûtras 6.

1: 'There are five great sacrifices (mahâyagñas); they are great Sattras: the offering to Beings, the offering to men, the offering to the Fathers (i.e. the Manes), the offering to the Gods, the offering to the Brahman.' After this introduction follows an account of one of the five great offerings, namely of the Brahmayagña, i.e. of the daily Veda recitation (svâdhyâya). The third Adhyâya of Âsvalâyana's Grihya-sûtra begins in exactly the same way with the sentence: 'Now (follow) the five sacrifices: the sacrifice to the Gods, the sacrifice to the Beings, the sacrifice to the Fathers, the sacrifice to the Brahman, the sacrifice to men,' and then follows here also a discussion of the Brahmayagña, which is entirely analogous to that given in the Satapatha Brâhmana. Âsvalâyana here does not content himself with describing the actual course of ceremonies as is the rule in the Sûtra texts; he undertakes, quite in the way of the Brâhmana texts, to explain their meaning: 'In that he recites the Rikas, he thereby satiates the gods with oblations of milk, in that (he recites) the Yagus, with oblations of ghee,' &c. It is plain that the mode of exposition adopted by Âsvalâyana in this passage, which is different from the usual Sûtra style, finds its explanation in the supposition that exceptionally in this case the author of the Grihya-sûtra had before him a Brâhmana text, which he could take as his model, whether that text was the Satapatha itself or another similar text.

Among the extremely various prescriptions which we find

1: 'If a man wishes that a learned son should be born to him, famous, a public man, a popular speaker, that he should know all the Vedas, and that he should live to his full age, then, after having prepared boiled rice with meat and butter, they should both eat, being fit to have offspring,' &c. Then follows a description of an Âgya offering, after which the marital cohabitation is to be performed with certain formulas. This, however, is not the last of the acts through which the father assures himself of the possession of such a distinguished son; certain rites follow, which are to be performed at birth and after birth, the Âyushya ceremony and the Medhâganana. These rites are here prescribed for the special case where the father has the above-mentioned wishes for the prosperity of his child; but the description agrees essentially with the description of the corresponding acts in the Grihya-sûtras 2, which are inculcated for all cases, without reference to a determined wish of the father. It is a justifiable conjecture that, although this certainly does not apply to the whole of ceremonies described in the Grihya-sûtras, many portions of these ceremonies and verses that were used in connection with them, &c., were first developed, not as a universal rite or duty, but as the special possession of individuals, who hoped to attain special goods and advantages by performing the ceremony in this way.

It was only later, as I think, that such prescriptions

1 as distinguished from the vaitânikâni, or, as Sâṅkhâyana says, of the pâkayagñâs, or, as Pâraskara says, of the grihyasthâlîpâkânâm karma. The

1 or Grihyasthâlîpâkas should not be pressed with the utmost strictness, as though nothing were treated in the Grihya-sûtras which does not come under these heads. First of all the term Sthâlîpâka is too narrow, since it does not include the offerings of sacrificial butter which constituted a great number of ceremonies. But besides many ceremonies and observances are taught in the Grihya-sûtras, which cannot in any way be characterised as sacrifices at all, only possessing some inner resemblance to the group of sacrifices there treated of, or standing in more or less close connection with them 2.

The Sûtra texts divide the Pâkayagñas in various ways; either four or seven principal forms are taken up. The

1. The division into seven classes is doubtless occasioned by the division of the Haviryagñas and of the Somayagñas, which also each include seven classes 2; for the nature of the sacrifices in question would hardly of itself have led to such a division. The seven classes taken up are either those given by Gautama VIII, 15 3: 'The seven kinds of Pâkayagñas, viz. the Ashtakâ, the Pârvana (Sthâlîpâka, offered on the new and full moon days), the funeral oblations, the Srâvanî, the Âgrahâyanî, the Kaitrî, and the Âsvayugî.' Or else the seven classes are established as follows, the fourfold division being utilised to some extent 4: 'Huta, Prahuta, Âhuta (sic, not Ahuta), the spit-ox sacrifice, the Bali offering, the re-descent (on the Âgrahâyana day), the Ashtakâ sacrifice.' According to the account of Prof. Bühler 5, the exposition of Baudhâyana, who gives this division, keeps closely to the course which it prescribes. For the rest, however, the Grihya texts with which I am acquainted do not follow any of these divisions, and this is easily accounted for, if we consider the artificial character of these classifications, which are undertaken merely for the sake of having a complete scheme of the sacrifices. On the contrary, as a whole the texts give an arrangement which is based on the nature of the ceremonies they describe. In many instances we find considerable variations between the texts of the different schools; often enough, in a given text, the place

1. On the other hand, if the exposition begins with the marriage, there follows naturally the series of ceremonies which are to be performed up to the birth of a child, and then the ceremonies for the young child, which finally lead up to the Upanayana and a description of the period of studentship. The Hiranyakesi-sûtra alone, of the Sûtras treated of in these translations, follows the first of the two orders mentioned 2; the other texts follow the other order,

1: 'Then (i.e. after the marriage) follow the Samskâras, the rites to be performed at the conception of a child, at various periods before his birth, at the time of his birth, the ceremony of naming the child, of carrying him out to see the sun, of feeding him, of cutting his hair, and lastly of investing him as a student, and handing him to a Guru, under whose care he is to study the sacred writings, that is to say, to learn them by heart, and 'to perform all the offices of a Brahmakârin, or religious student.'

In this way we find, as a rule, in the foreground in the first part of the Grihya-sûtras this great group of acts which accompany the domestic life from marriage to the studentship and the Samâvartana of the child sprung from wedlock. We find, however, inserted into the description of these ceremonies, in various ways in the different Sûtras, the exposition of a few ritualistic matters which we have not yet mentioned. In the first place a description of the setting up of the sacred domestic fire, i.e. of the ceremony which in the domain of the Grihya ritual corresponds to the agnyâdheya of the Srauta ritual. The setting up of the fire forms the necessary preliminary to all sacred acts; the regular time for it is the wedding 2, so that the fire used for the wedding acts accompanies the young couple to their home, and there forms the centre of their household worship. Accordingly in the Grihya-sûtras the description of the setting up of the fire stands, as a rule, at the beginning of the whole, not far from the description of the wedding.

Next the introductory sections of the Grihya-sûtras have to describe the type of the Grihya sacrifice, which is universally available and recurs at all household ceremonies. This can be done in such a way that this type is described for itself, without direct reference to a particular sacrifice. This is the case in Pâraskara, who in the first chapter of his

1.' Similarly Âsvalâyana, in one of the first chapters of his work, enumerates the rites which are to be performed 'whenever he intends to sacrifice 2.' Other texts give a general description of the Grihya sacrifice by exemplifying it by one special sacrifice. Sâṅkhâyana 3 chooses for this the sacrifice which the bridegroom has to offer, when a favourable answer has been granted to his wooing; Gobhila 4 gives at least the greater part of the rules in question à propos of the full moon and of the new moon sacrifice; Hiranyakesin 5, who opens his account at the period of the studentship of the young Brâhmana, describes the sacrificial type à propos of the Upanayana rite.

The sacrifices which are to be offered daily at morning and at evening, those which are celebrated monthly on the days of the new moon and of the full moon—the Grihya copies of the Agnihotra and of the Darsapûrnamâsa sacrifices—and, thirdly, the daily distribution of the Bali offerings: these ceremonies are commonly described along with what we have called the first great group of the Grihya acts, immediately preceding or following the Vivâha.

We find, as a second group of sacred acts, a series of celebrations, which, if the man has founded his household, are to be performed regularly at certain times of the year at the household fire. So the Sravâna sacrifice, which is offered to the snakes at the time when, on account of the danger from snakes, a raised couch is necessary at night. At the end of this period the festival of the re-descent is celebrated: the exchanging of the high couch for the low couch on the ground. Between these two festivals comes the Prishâtaka offering on the full-moon day of the month Âsvayuga; it receives in the Grihya texts the place corresponding to that which actually belongs to

1 the acts we have just mentioned are followed, in accordance with the natural series, by the Ashtakâ festivals, which are celebrated during the last months of the year.

Alongside of these acts which are connected with fixed points of the year we find in the various Grihya texts an account of a series of other ceremonies, which, in accordance with their nature, have no such fixed position in the system of the ritual. Thus, for instance, the rites which refer to the choice of a piece of ground to build a house or to the building itself; further, the rites connected with agriculture and cattle raising. In many texts we find together with this group of acts also an account of the ceremonies, related to fixed points in the year, which stand in connection with the annual course of Vedic study: the description of the opening festival and of the closing festival of the school term, as well as a point which generally follows these descriptions, the rules as to the anadhyâya, i.e. as to the occasions which necessitate an intermission in the study of the Veda for a longer or for a shorter period. As a rule, the Grihya-sûtras bring the account of these things into the group of acts which refer to the household life of the Grihastha; for the Adhyâpana, i.e. the teaching of the Veda, held the first place among the rights and duties of the Brâhmana who had completed his time at school. On the other hand these ceremonies can naturally also be considered as connected with the school life of the young Hindu, and accordingly they are placed in that division by Gobhila 2, between the description of the Upanayana and that of the Samâvartana.

The sacred acts connected with the burial and the worship of the dead (the various kinds of Srâddha rites) may be designated as a third group of the ceremonies which are described to us in the Grihya.-sûtras. Finally, a fourth group comprises the acts which are connected with the attainment of particular desires (kâmyâni). Among the

1.

These remarks cannot claim to give a complete outline of the contents and arrangement of the Grihya texts; they only aim at giving an idea of the fundamental traits, which in each particular text are modified by manifold variations, but which nevertheless are to these variations as the rule is to the exceptions.

We must now speak of the relations of the Grihya-sûtras to the two other kinds of Sûtra texts, with which they have so many points of contact in the Srauta-sûtras and the Dharma-sûtras.

Prof. Bühler, in several places of the excellent introductions which he has prefixed to his translations of the Dharma-sûtras, has called attention to the fact that the relation in which the Sûtra texts of the same school stand to each other is very different in different schools. Many schools possess a great corpus of Sûtras, the parts of which are the Srauta-sûtra, the Grihya-sûtra, &c. This is, for instance, the case with the Âpastambîya school 2; its Sûtra is divided into thirty Prasnas, the contents of which are divided as follows:

In other cases the single Sûtra texts stand more independently side by side; they are not considered as parts of one and the same great work, but as different works. Of course it is the Dharma-sûtras above all which could be freed from the connection with the other Sûtra texts to such an extent, that even their belonging to a distinct Vedic school may be doubtful. The contents

1. But above all, the Grihya ceremonies demanded the knowledge of numerous Mantras, and accordingly as these Mantras were borrowed from the one or the ether Mantra Sâkhâ 2, there followed in the case of the Grihya text in question an intimate connection with the corresponding Mantra school 3. We find accordingly as a general rule, that each Grihya-sûtra presupposes a Vedic Samhitâ, whose Mantras it quotes only in their Pratîkas 4, and that besides each Grihya-sûtra presupposes a previous

1. It is not necessary to quote the numerous places where the Grihya-sûtras either expressly refer to the Srauta-sûtras, or point to them by repeating the same phrases or often even whole Sûtras. It will be sufficient to quote one out of many places, the opening words of the Âsvalâyana-Grihya, which in a way characterise this work as a second part of the Srauta-sûtra: 'The rites based on the spreading (of the three sacred fires) have been declared; we shall declare the Grihya rites 2.'

Thus it is not difficult to perceive the dependence of the Grihya-sûtras on the Srauta-sûtras; but there remains the much more difficult question whether in each particular case both texts are to be regarded as by the same author, or whether the Grihya-sûtra is an appendix to the Srauta-sûtra composed by another author. Tradition accepts the one alternative for some Sûtras; for other Sûtras it accepts the other; thus in the domain of the Rig-Veda literature Âsvalâyana and Sâṅkhâyana are credited with the authorship of a Srauta-sûtra as well as of a Grihya-sûtra; the same is true of Âpastamba, Hiranyakesin, and other authors. On the other hand, the authorship of the Grihya-sûtras which follow the Srauta-sûtras of Kâtyâyana, Lâtyâyana, Drâhyâyana, is not ascribed to Kâtyâyana, Lâtyâyana, Drâhyâyana, but to Pâraskara, Gobhila, and Khâdirâkârya.

It seems to me that we should consider the testimony of tradition as entirely trustworthy in the second class of cases. Tradition is very much inclined to ascribe to celebrated masters and heads of schools the origin of works which are acknowledged authorities in their schools, even though they are not the authors. But it is not likely that tradition should have made a mistake in the opposite

1. But these agreements cannot be considered as sufficient proof that in each case the Grihya-sûtra and the Srauta-sûtra are by the same author. Even if the author of the Grihya-sûtra was not Âsvalâyana or Sâṅkhâyana 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 2. On the other hand, if the Srauta-sûtras and Grihya-sûtras 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. It seems to me then that until the discovery of further circumstances throwing light on the question of the identity of the authors of the Srautas and of the Grihyas, it would be premature if we were to venture on a decision of this question in one direction or the other.

Prof. Bühler's investigations have made perfectly clear the relation in which the Grihya-sûtras and the Dharma-sûtras stand to each other in those cases, where we have texts of both kinds by the same school. In the case of the Grihya-sûtra and the Dharma-sûtra of the Âpastambîyas he has proved 2 that both texts were the work of the same author according to a common plan, so that the Grihya-sûtra is as short and terse as possible, because Âpastamba had reserved for the Dharma-sûtra a portion of the subject-matter generally treated of in the Grihya-sûtras. Besides there are references in each of the two texts to the other which strengthen the proof of their being written by the same author. In the Sûtra collection of Hiranyakesin the state of things is different. Here, as Prof. Bühler has also shown 3, we find numerous discrepancies between the Grihya and the Dharma-sûtra, which are owing to the fact, that while this teacher took as Dharma-sûtra that of Âpastamba with some unessential changes, he composed a Grihya-sûtra of his own. Of the two Sûtras of Baudhâyana, the same distinguished scholar, to whom we owe the remarks we have just mentioned, has treated in the Sacred Books of the East, vol. xiv, p. xxxi.

I believe that every reader who compares the two kinds of texts will notice that the frame within which the exposition of the Dharma-sûtras is inclosed, is an essentially

1, an exposition which, on the one hand, no longer limited itself to the points discussed in the Pâtimokkha, and which, on the other hand, necessarily had much in common with what was laid down in the Pâtimokkha. The relation of the Grihya-sûtras and Dharma-sûtras seems to me to be of a similar nature. The Grihya-sûtras begin to treat of the events of the daily life of the household, but they do not yet undertake to exhaust the great mass of this subject-matter; on the contrary they confine themselves principally to the ritual or sacrificial side of household life, as is natural owing to their connection with the older ritualistic literature. Then the Dharma-sûtras take an important step further; their purpose is to describe the whole of the rights and customs which prevail in private, civic, and public life. They naturally among other things touch upon the ceremonies treated in the Grihya-sûtras, but they generally merely mention them and discuss the questions of law and custom which are connected with them, without undertaking to go into the technical ordinances as to the way in which these ceremonies are to be performed 2.

Only in a few cases do portions treated of in the domain of the Dharma-sûtras happen to coincide with portions treated of in the Grihya-sûtras. Thus especially, apart from a few objects of less importance, the detailed rules for the behaviour of the Snâtaka and the rules for the interruptions

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We have spoken above of the metrical peculiarities of the Mantras quoted in the Grihya-sûtras, the metre of which clearly proves what is indubitable from other reasons, that most, if not all, of these verses were composed at a perceptibly older period than the descriptions of the sacred acts in the midst of which they are inserted 1. A second kind of verses which are quoted in the Grihya-sûtras must be carefully distinguished from these. It is doubtful whether there are any to be found among them which the authors of the Sûtras have themselves composed; but they were composed at a period decidedly more recent than those Mantras 2, and they therefore exhibit metrical peculiarities which are essentially different. The verses I mean are Slokas of ritual contents, which are quoted to confirm or to complete what is stated in the prose, and which are introduced by such expressions as tad apy âhuh 'here they say also,' or tad api slokâh 'here there are also Slokas,' and other similar phrases 3.

We called attention above (p. xix) to the fact that a verse of this kind occurs in one of the Grihya chapters of the Satapatha Brâhmana, in a metre corresponding to the peculiarities of the older literary style. On the other hand, the verses appearing in the Grihya-sûtras differ only in a few cases from the standard of the later Sloka prosody, as we have it, e. g. in the Mahâbhârata and in the laws of Manu. In the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländ. Gesellschaft, vol. xxxvii, p. 67, I have given tables for the verses in question out of the Sâṅkhâyana-Grihya, and these tables show that the characteristic ending of the first

, which, for instance, in the Nalopâkhyâna of the Mahâbhârata covers precisely five-sixths of all the cases, occurs in Sâṅkhâyana in thirty cases out of thirty-nine, that is in about three quarters of the cases 1; Sâṅkhâyana has still twice the ending which is the rule in the Rig-veda, but which is forbidden by the later prosody: prahutah pitrikarmanâ, uktvâ mantram sprised apah 2. It may be observed that a similar treatment of the Sloka metre appears also in the Rig-veda Prâtisâkhya of Saunaka. Here too the modern form of the ending of the first pâda dominates, although sometimes the old iambic form is preserved, e. g. II, 5 antahpadamvivrittayah, III, 6 anudâttodaye punah.

It seems evident that we have in this Sloka form of the Sûtra period, the last preparatory stage which the development of this metre had to traverse, before it arrived at the shape which it assumes in epic poetry; and it is to be hoped that more exhaustive observations on this point (account being especially taken of the numerous verses quoted in the Dharma-sûtras) will throw an important light on the chronology of the literature of this period lying between the Vedas and the post-Vedic age.

We add to these remarks on the Slokas quoted in the Grihya-sûtras, that we come upon a number of passages in the midst of the prose of the Sûtras, which without being in any way externally designated as verses, have an unmistakable metrical character, being evidently verses which the authors of the Sûtras found ready made, and which they used for their own aphorisms, either without changing them at all, or with such slight changes that the original form remained clearly recognisable. Thus we read in Âsvalâyana (Grihya I, 6, 8), as a definition of the Râkshasa marriage: hatvâ bhittvâ ka sîrshâni rudatîm rudadbhyo

Mahâvrikshân smasânam ka nadîs ka vishamâni ka 1.