Oldenberg

KHĀDIRA-GRIHYA-SŪTRA.

INTRODUCTION

TO THE

KHĀDIRA-GRIHYA-SŪTRA.

AMONG the Grantha MSS. collected by the late Dr. Burnell and now belonging to the India Office Library, there are some MSS. (numbers CLXXII and following of the Catalogue) of a Gr̥hya-sūtra hitherto unpublished, which is ascribed to Khādirācārya. It belongs to the Drāhyāyaṇa school of the Sāma-veda, which prevails in the south of the Indian peninsula ¹, and it is based on the Gobhilīya-sūtra, from which it has taken the greater number of its aphorisms, just as the Drāhyāyaṇa-Srauta-sūtra, as far as we can judge at present, is nothing but a slightly altered redaction of Lāṭyāyana ². Like the Gobhila-Gr̥hya it very seldom gives the Mantras in their full extent, but quotes them only with their Pratīkas, and it is easy to identify these quotations in the Mantrabrāhmaṇa (published at Calcutta, 1873), which contains the texts prescribed by Gobhila for the Gr̥hya ceremonies.

The Khādira-Gr̥hya has evidently been composed with the intention of abridging Gobhila’s very detailed and somewhat lengthy treatise on the domestic rites. Digressions, such as, for instance, that introduced by the words tatraihad āhuḥ, Gobhila I, 2, 10-27, or such as Gobhila’s explication of the terms paurṇamāsī and amāvāsyā, I, 5, 7 seqq., or most of the regulations concerning the Sakvaryas, III, 3, or the Slokas, IV, 7, are invariably left

out, and in the descriptions of the single ceremonies throughout the principal points only are given, with the omission of all words and of all matter that it seemed possible to dispense with. On the other hand, the arrangement of the Sūtras has undergone frequent changes, in which the compiler clearly shows his intention of grouping together, more carefully than was done in the original text, the Sūtras which naturally belong to each other. Of the Sūtras of the Khādira-Gr̥hya which cannot be identified in Gobhila, several are to be traced back to Lāṭyāyana, or we should perhaps rather say, to Drāhyāyaṇa. Thus Khād. I, 1, 14 mantrāntam avyaktaṁ parasyādigrahaṇena vidyāt evidently corresponds to Lāṭyāyana I, 1, 3, uttarādiḥ pūrvāntalakshaṇam, and Khād. I, 1, 24 avyāvr̥ttiṁ yajñāṅgair avyavāyaṁ cecḥet is identical with Lāṭy. I, 2, 15, avyavāyovyāvr̥ttiś ca yagñāṅgaiḥ.

Upon the whole, though certainly the Khādira-Gr̥hya does not contain much matter which is not known to us from other sources, it notwithstanding possesses a certain interest, since it shows by a very clear example how a Sūtrakāra of the later time would remodel the work of a more ancient author, trying to surpass him by a more correct arrangement, and especially by what became more and more appreciated as the chief accomplishment of Sūtra composition, the greatest possible succinctness and economising of words. To an interpreter of Gobhila the comparison of the Khādira-Gr̥hya no doubt will suggest in many instances a more correct understanding of his text than he would have been likely to arrive at without that aid, and perhaps even readings of Gobhila which seemed hitherto subject to no doubt, will have to give way to readings supplied by the Grantha MSS. of the Khādira-Gr̥hya. Thus, Gobhila III, 8, 16, I do not hesitate to correct asaṁsvādam, on the authority of Khād. III, 3, 13, into asaṁkhādam or asaṁkhādan ³.

As the text of the Khādira-Gr̥hya is very short and has not yet been published, it has been printed at the foot of the page, together with references to the parallel passages of Gobhila. For further explanations of the single Sūtras, I refer to my translation of Gobhila which will form part of the second volume of the Gr̥hya-sūtras, where I shall also hope to give some extracts from Rudraskanda’s commentary on the Khādira-Gr̥hya.