Kalpa Sutras

(“aphorisms on sacred law”) An important class of smrti or “remembered [literature].” The Kalpa Sutras were first
composed around the sixth century
B.C.E. The sutras were collected to provide a unified religious and legal worldview. According to the general scholarly
consensus, the theory used to associate
these sutras imposed an appearance of
conceptual order on what was more
likely an organic development of Hindu
religious law. The Kalpa Sutras are all
attributed to famous sages. In theory
each Kalpa Sutra contains three separate parts: prescriptions for Vedic rituals
(Shrauta Sutras), prescriptions for
domestic rites (Grhya Sutras), and prescriptions for appropriate human
behavior (Dharma Sutras). The real picture is far more complex since only three
sutras contain all three parts and are
attributed to a single author. The three
surviving Kalpa Sutras are attributed to
the sages Apastamba, Baudhayana, and
Hiranyakeshin and are all associated
with the same school, the Black Yajur
Veda. There are many other collections
that have one or another of these parts,
but not all three. Each of the Kalpa
Sutras is also theoretically connected
with one of the four Vedas, the earliest
Hindu religious texts. However, it is likely
that this claim was made to give authority to the collection.