Grihya Sutras, Part 2 (SBE30): Grihya Sûtra of Gobhila: Introduction

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GRIHYA-SÛTRA OF GOBHILA.

INTRODUCTION

TO THE

GRIHYA-SÛTRA OF GOBHILA.

The Grihya-sûtra of Gobhila differs from those of Sâṅkhâyana, Âsvalâyana, Pâraskara, Hiranyakesin in one essential point: while these texts presuppose only the same Vedic Samhitâs on which also the corresponding Srauta-sûtras are based, viz. the Rig-veda-Samhitâ, the Vâgasaneyi-Samhitâ, and the Taittirîya-Samhitâ; the Sûtra of Gobhila, on the other hand, presupposes, beside the Samhitâ of the Sâma-veda 1, 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

1. By far the greater part of the Mantras of which Gobhila quotes the first words, are not found in the Sâma-veda nor, for the most part, in any other Vedic Samhitâ, except in the Mantra-Brâhmana, 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 Sûtras 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-Brâhmana which alone could show which 'the two following verses' were.

There are, consequently, two possibilities: either the Mantra-Brâhmana existed before the Gobhilîya-sûtra, 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; but those Mantras, most of which consist only of a few words, are given by Gobhila only. It is scarcely to be believed that in a Samhitâ which had to contain the Mantras required for the performance of the Grihya sacrifices, the Mantras belonging to the two daily and the two fortnightly sacrifices, which occupy one of the first places among all Grihya ceremonies and are treated of accordingly in all Grihya-sûtras, should have been omitted, unless that Samhitâ was intended to stand in relation to another text by which that deficiency was supplied: and the Gobhilîya-sûtra exactly supplies it. Prof. Knauer thinks that those Mantras were omitted because they had already found their place in the Srauta ritual; but we must not forget that in the Srauta ritual o f the Sâma-vedins neither the Agnihotra nor the Darsapûrnamâsa sacrifices, which are performed without the assistance of priests of the Udgâtri class, are treated of. Moreover the one Mantra to which we have already alluded 2, the single one which corresponds in the Mantra-Brâhmana to the first book of Gobhila, seems to me quite sufficient to show that it was not the intention of the compiler of that text to disregard that group of sacrifices; he gave that Mantra only, because the other Mantras, consisting of but a few words, were given in extenso in the Gobhila text. The Mantra of which we speak, belongs to the description

1 has only the first words of it. To assume here that the author of the Mantra-Brâhmana knew only of that one Mantra, and that at the time of Gobhila the custom of the Sâma-vedins had undergone a change, so that they used four Mantras instead of the one, would be, in my opinion, an artificial and not very probable way of explaining the facts; a much more natural supposition would be, I believe, that the Sûtra and the Mantra-Brâhmana describe one and the same form of the ceremony, so that the Brâhmana, by omitting the short Mantras, which were given in the Sûtra in their entirety, implicitly refers to the Sûtra, and the Sûtra, on the other hand, by quoting only the first words of the longer Mantra, refers to the Brâhmana in which the full text of that Mantra was given.

Among the numerous ceremonies described by Gobhila, which could furnish the occasion for similar remarks, we select only two: the rites performed in the evening of the wedding-day 2, and the sacrifice on the full-moon day of Âsvayuga 3. The bridegroom, having carried away his bride from her home, takes her to the house of a Brâhmana, and when the stars have appeared, he makes six oblations with the six verses lekhâsandhishu pakshmasu (Mantra-Br. I, 3, 1-6): these are given in the Mantra-Brâhmana, and Gobhila has only the Pratîka. Then follow two short Mantras: the bride, to whom the polar-star has been shown, addresses that star with the words: dhruvam asi dhruvâham patikule bhûyâsam amushyâsâv iti;

1. On the other hand, a number of short Mantras which Gobhila gives in extenso, are found nevertheless also in the Mantra-Brâhmana: such is the case, for instance, with many of the Mantras belonging to the worship of the Fathers, Gobhila IV, 2. 3, Mantra-Br. II, 3.

1.

And this brings me to one of Prof. Knauer's conjectures concerning the Mantra-Brâhmana which I have not yet touched. According to tradition we consider the Mantra-Brâhmana as belonging to the Sâma-veda; in the Calcutta edition it is designated as the 'Sâma-vedasya Mantra-Brâhmanam.' Prof. Knauer thinks that it is doubtful whether the Mantra-Brâhmana belonged to the Sâma-veda originally. He conjectures 2 'that it existed already in the

1.' For out of 249 Mantras of the Mantra-Brâhmana there are only four which are found in the Sâma-veda 2, as Prof. Knauer has shown, while a much greater number of these Mantras. occur in the other Vedic Samhitâs. I should be inclined to conclude the other way: just because the author of the Mantra-Brâhmana presupposed a knowledge of the Samhitâ of the Sâma-veda, but not of the other Vedas—or in other words because he destined his work for Sâma-vedins, he did not need to repeat what was in the Sâma-veda, but was compelled to incorporate in his compilation the Mantras out of the Rig-veda or of the Yagur-veda 3. Moreover, I would draw the same conclusions from the Mantras cited by Gobhila which are absent in the Mantra-Brâhmana, as I did from the Mantras which occur in the Mantra-Brâhmana, but are not to be found in the Sâma-veda. Those Mantras are all to be found in the Sâma-veda with the exception of those which Gobhila has in extenso, and which therefore could be omitted in the Mantra-Brâhmana. If we examine the thirteen Mantras collected by Prof. Knauer (p. 29), we find that in the case of nine of them the passage of the Sâma-veda (always of the first Ârkika of the Sâma-veda) where they are to be found is quoted by Prof. Knauer.

rikam sâma yagâmahe, Gobh. III, 2, 48.

tak kakshur devahitam, III, 8, 5.

sam anyâ yanti, III, 9, 7.

pragâpataye, IV, 7, 36.