Introduction

p. 2 p. 3

INTRODUCTION

TO THE

GṚHYA-SŪTRA OF GOBHILA.

The Gṛhya-sūtra of Gobhila differs from those of Śāṅkhāyana, Āśvalāyana, Pāraskara, Hiraṇyakeśin in one essential point: while these texts presuppose only the same Vedic Saṃhitās on which also the corresponding Śrauta-sūtras are based, viz. the Ṛg-veda-Saṃhitā, the Vājasaneyi-Saṃhitā, and the Taittirīya-Saṃhitā; the Sūtra of Gobhila, on the other hand, presupposes, beside the Saṃhitā of the Sāma-veda^[1], another collection of Mantras which evidently was composed expressly with the purpose of being used at Gṛhya ceremonies: this collection is preserved to us under the title of the Mantra-Brāhmaṇa, and it has been edited at Calcutta (1873), with a commentary and Bengali translation by Satyavrata Sāmaśramin^[2].

Prof. Knauer of Kiew, to whom all students of the Gṛhya literature are highly indebted for his very accurate edition and translation of Gobhila, has been the first to examine into the relation in which the two texts, the Mantra-Brāhmaṇa and the Gobhilīya-sūtra, stand to each other. He has very kindly enabled me to make use, before they were published, of the results of his investigations, which he has laid down in the introduction to his translation of Gobhila. While I wish, therefore, to acknowledge the obligation under which Prof. Knauer has thus laid me, I must try, on the other side, to state my own opinion as to the problem in question, which in some points differs from, or is even opposed to, the theory by which Prof. Knauer has tried to solve it.

To begin with that side of the question regarding which there can scarcely be any doubt: it is certain, I believe, that Gobhila supposes the Mantra-Brāhmaṇa to be known to the students of his Sūtra. The reasons which show this are obvious enough^[3]. By far the greater part of the Mantras of which Gobhila quotes the first words, are not found in the Sāma-veda nor, for the most part, in any other Vedic Saṃhitā, except in the Mantra-Brāhmaṇa, in which they stand in exactly the same order in which they are referred to by Gobhila. The descriptions of the Gṛhya 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-Brāhmaṇa. And not only the Mantras, but also the order in which the Mantras stood, for Sūtras 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-Brāhmaṇa which alone could show which 'the two following verses' were.

There are, consequently, two possibilities: either the Mantra-Brāhmaṇa existed before the Gobhilīya-sūtra, 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 the attention of Vedic scholars to some facts which seem to me to render the second more probable.

A great part of the Mantras which have to be recited, according to Gobhila, at the performance of the Gṛhya ceremonies, are not given in the Mantra-Brāhmaṇa, but they are either found in the Sāma-veda-Saṃhitā and then their Pratīkas are quoted by Gobhila, or they are cited by Gobhila in extenso. Thus for the ceremonies described in the first Prapāṭhaka of Gobhila, such as the morning and evening offerings and the sacrifices of the full and new moon, the Mantra-Brāhmaṇa gives, with one single exception, no Mantras at all^[4]; 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 Saṃhitā which had to contain the Mantras required for the performance of the Gṛhya sacrifices, the Mantras belonging to the two daily and the two fortnightly sacrifices, which occupy one of the first places among all Gṛhya ceremonies and are treated of accordingly in all Gṛhya-sūtras, should have been omitted, unless that Saṃhitā was intended to stand in relation to another text by which that deficiency was supplied: and the Gobhilīya-sūtra exactly supplies it. Prof. Knauer thinks that those Mantras were omitted because they had already found their place in the Śrauta ritual; but we must not forget that in the Śrauta ritual o f the Sāma-vedins neither the Agnihotra nor the Darśapūrṇamāsa sacrifices, which are performed without the assistance of priests of the Udgātṛ class, are treated of. Moreover the one Mantra to which we have already alluded^[5], the single one which corresponds in the Mantra-Brāhmaṇa 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 of the paryukṣaṇa of the sacrificial fire. The sacrificer pours out water to the south, the west, and the north of the fire, with the Mantras, 'Adite^ऽnumanyasva,' 'Anumate^ऽnumanyasva,' 'Sarasvaty anumanyasva'; then he sprinkles water round the fire once or three times with a longer Mantra, 'Deva Savitaḥ prasuva yajñam prasuva yajñapatim bhagāya. Divyo gandharvaḥ ketapūḥ ketaṃ naḥ punātu. Vācaspatir vācaṃ naḥ svadatu.' This last one is the Mantra given in its entirety in the Mantra-Brāhmaṇa, while Gobhila^[6] has only the first words of it. To assume here that the author of the Mantra-Brāhmaṇa knew only of that one Mantra, and that at the time of Gobhila the custom of the Sāma-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 Sūtra and the Mantra-Brāhmaṇa describe one and the same form of the ceremony, so that the Brāhmaṇa, by omitting the short Mantras, which were given in the Sūtra in their entirety, implicitly refers to the Sūtra, and the Sūtra, on the other hand, by quoting only the first words of the longer Mantra, refers to the Brāhmaṇa 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^[7], and the sacrifice on the full-moon day of Āśvayuja^[8]. The bridegroom, having carried away his bride from her home, takes her to the house of a Brāhmaṇa, and when the stars have appeared, he makes six oblations with the six verses lekhāsandhishu pakṣmasu (Mantra-Br. I, 3, 1-6): these are given in the Mantra-Brāhmaṇa, and Gobhila has only the Pratīka. Then follow two short Mantras: the bride, to whom the polar-star has been shown, addresses that star with the words: dhruvam asi dhruvāhaṃ patikule bhūyāsam amushyāsāv iti; and when she sees the star Arundhatī, she says, ruddhāham asmi. As the full wording of these Mantras is given by Gobhila, they are omitted in the Brāhmaṇa. Finally the bridegroom recites over the bride the Ṛc dhruvā dyaur dhruvā pṛthivī, &c.; this we find in the M.-B. (I, 3, 7), the Pratīka only being quoted by Gobhila. If one were to suppose here that in the two texts two different stages in the development of this ceremony are represented, so that only the Mantras lekhāsandhishu and dhruvā dyauḥ would belong to the more ancient form of it, while the Mantras dhruvam asi and ruddhāham asmi would have been introduced at a later time, it may perhaps not be possible to disprove, in the strictest sense of the word, such an opinion. But I think the data we have given point to another solution of the problem which, if not the only admissible, is yet the most probable and natural one. Gobhila gave the full wording of the shorter Mantras with which the description of the ceremony could be interwoven without becoming obscure or disproportionate; the longer Mantras would have interrupted, rather tediously and inconveniently, the coherency of his ritual statements; so he separated them from the rest of his work and made a separate Saṃhitā of them. It is true that there are some exceptions to the rule that all long Mantras are given in the Mantra-Brāhmaṇa and all short Mantras only in the Sara: on the one hand, there are some Mantras of considerable extent that are given by Gobhila and omitted in the Brāhmaṇa, thus, for instance, the Mantra yady asi saumī used at a preparatory ceremony that belongs to the Puṃsavana^[9]. On the other hand, a number of short Mantras which Gobhila gives in extenso, are found nevertheless also in the Mantra-Brāhmaṇa: 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.

It appears then, that allowance must be made for a certain inconsistency or carelessness in the distribution of the material between the two texts: and such an assumption will easily be allowed by any one who does not entertain very exaggerated ideas as to the care and reflection which presided over the composition of the Sūtra texts.

I will add only a few words concerning a second Gṛhya ceremony, which calls for the same sort of comment as the rites which have just been discussed. For the offering on the day of the full moon, Gobhila prescribes (III, 8, 2) first the verse ā no mitrāvaruṇā, second the verse mā nastoke. The Mantra-Brāhmaṇa (II, 1, 8) has the second of these verses only, not the first: conversely, the first verse alone, and not the second, is to be found in the Saṃhitā of the Sāma-veda (I, 220). We could hardly assume, as I think, that the Mantra-Brāhmaṇa presupposed another form of the rite differing from Gobhila's; we should be much more inclined to consider the leaving out of that matter, which was contained in other texts of the Sāma-veda, as a proof that the compiler of the Mantra-Brāhmaṇa assumed that those texts were known^[10].

And this brings me to one of Prof. Knauer's conjectures concerning the Mantra-Brāhmaṇa which I have not yet touched. According to tradition we consider the Mantra-Brāhmaṇa as belonging to the Sāma-veda; in the Calcutta edition it is designated as the 'Sāma-vedasya Mantra-Brāhmaṇam.' Prof. Knauer thinks that it is doubtful whether the Mantra-Brāhmaṇa belonged to the Sāma-veda originally. He conjectures^[11] 'that it existed already in the period during which the separate schools were as yet in the process of sifting, when there were as yet no Sāma-vedists in the later and stricter sense of the term^[12].' For out of 249 Mantras of the Mantra-Brāhmaṇa there are only four which are found in the Sāma-veda^[13], as Prof. Knauer has shown, while a much greater number of these Mantras. occur in the other Vedic Saṃhitās. I should be inclined to conclude the other way: just because the author of the Mantra-Brāhmaṇa presupposed a knowledge of the Saṃhitā of the Sāma-veda, but not of the other Vedas—or in other words because he destined his work for Sāma-vedins, he did not need to repeat what was in the Sāma-veda, but was compelled to incorporate in his compilation the Mantras out of the Ṛg-veda or of the Yajur-veda^[14]. Moreover, I would draw the same conclusions from the Mantras cited by Gobhila which are absent in the Mantra-Brāhmaṇa, as I did from the Mantras which occur in the Mantra-Brāhmaṇa, but are not to be found in the Sāma-veda. Those Mantras are all to be found in the Sāma-veda with the exception of those which Gobhila has in extenso, and which therefore could be omitted in the Mantra-Brāhmaṇa. 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 Sāma-veda (always of the first Ārcika of the Sāma-veda) where they are to be found is quoted by Prof. Knauer.

The four other cases are:

Of these Mantras the first is contained in the Sāma-veda (I, 369) just as the nine first-mentioned ones; the second is quoted by Gobhila in extenso; the third is to be found in the Āraṇyaka division of the Sāma-veda I (vol. ii, p. 292, ed. Bibl. Ind.); in the fourth finally the text is corrupt; it is intended for the verse out of the Mantra-Brāhmaṇa Prajāpate na tvad etāny anyaḥ. Thus the four apparent exceptions all vanish, and we have in the Mantras which are absent in the Mantra-Brāhmaṇa a new proof that this text belongs to the literature of the Sāma-veda^[15].

Thus, according to my view, we may describe the origin of the Mantra-Brāhmaṇa as follows. The Sāma-veda contained in its Saṃhitā a much smaller number of Mantras applicable to the Gṛhya rites than either the Ṛg-veda or the Yajur-veda; the peculiar character of the Sāman texts, intended for musical recitations at the most important sacrificial offerings, was quite remote from the character of formulas suitable for the celebration of a wedding, for the birth of a child, for the consecration of fields and flocks. Hence it is that, to a much greater extent than Āśvalāyana or Pāraskara, Gobhila mentions Mantras for which a reference to the Saṃhitā was not sufficient; and this led to the compiling of a separate Saṃhitā of such Gṛhya-mantras, which presupposes the Gṛhya-sūtra, just as the latter presupposes this Saṃhitā. The almost perfect agreement of the Mantra-Brāhmaṇa with Gobhila furnishes a valuable warrant for the good preservation of the two texts; of small discrepancies I have noted only two: Mantra-Brāhmaṇa I, 6, 15, the formula āgantrā samaganmahi is given for the ceremony of the Upanayana, while Gobhila does not prescribe this Mantra for this ceremony, although other Gṛhya texts do; and secondly, the Mantra-Brāhmaṇa II, 5, 1-7 does not consist of six verses as Gobh. IV, 6, 5-6 allows us to assume, but of seven verses.

In concluding this introduction notice is to be drawn to the fact that the text of Gobhila has preserved for us the traces of a division differing from the one into four Prapāṭhakas which is handed down by tradition: in a number of places certain Sūtras or the last words of certain Sūtras are set down twice, a well-known way of indicating the close of a chapter. This repetition, besides occurring at the end of the first, third, and fourth Prapāṭhaka (not at the end of the second), is to be found in the following places which become more frequent towards the close of the work: I, 4, 31; III, 6, 15; IV, 1, 22; 4, 34; 5, 34; 6, 16.