Introduction

MOST of the questions referring to the Gṛhya-sūtra of Āśvalāyana will be treated of more conveniently in connection with the different subjects which we shall have to discuss in our General Introduction to the Gṛhya-sūtras. Here I wish only to call attention to a well-known passage of Ṣaḍguruśiṣya, in which that commentator gives some statements on the works composed by Āśvalāyana and by his teacher Śaunaka. As an important point in that passage has, as far as I can see, been misunderstood by several eminent scholars, I may perhaps be allowed here to try and correct that misunderstanding, though the point stands in a less direct connection with the Gṛhya-sūtra than with another side of the literary activity of Āśvalāyana.

Ṣaḍguruśiṣya^[1], before speaking of Āśvalāyana, makes the following statements with regard to Āśvalāyana's teacher, Śaunaka. 'There was,' he says, 'the Śākala Saṃhitā (of the Rig-veda), and the Bāṣkala Saṃhitā; following these two Saṃhitās and the twenty-one Brāhmaṇas, adopting principally the Aitareyaka and supplementing it by the other texts, he who was revered by the whole number of great Ṛṣis composed the first Kalpa-sūtra.' He then goes on to speak of Āśvalāyana—'Śaunaka's pupil was the venerable Āśvalāyana. He who knew everything he had learnt from that teacher, composed a Sūtra and announced (to Śaunaka that he had done so)^[2].' Śaunaka then destroyed his own Sūtra, and determined that Āśvalāyana's Sūtra should be adopted by the students of that Vedic Śākhā. Thus, says Ṣaḍguruśiṣya, there were twelve works of Śaunaka by which a correct knowledge of the Rig-veda was preserved, and three works of Āśvalāyana. Śaunaka's daśa granthās were, the five Anukramaṇīs, the two Vidbānas, the Bārhaddaivata, the Prātiśākhya, and a Smārta work^[3]. Āśvalāyana, on the other hand, composed the Śrauta-sūtra in twelve Adhyāyas, the Gṛhya in four Adhyāyas, and the fourth Āraṇyaka: this is Āśvalāyana's great Sūtra composition^[4].

Here we have an interesting and important statement by which the authorship of a part of the Aitareyāraṇyaka, which would thus be separated from the rest of that text, is ascribed, not to Mahidāsa Aitareya, but to an author of what may be called the historical period of Vedic antiquity, to Āśvalāyana.

But what is the fourth Āraṇyaka to which this passage refers? Is it the text which is now set down, for instance, in Dr. Rājendralāla Mitra's edition, as the fourth Āraṇyaka of the Aitareyinas?

Before we give an answer to this question, attention must be called to other passages referring, as it could seem, to another part, namely, the fifth part of the Āraṇyaka.

Sāyaṇa, in his great commentary on the Rig-veda, very frequently quotes the pañcamāraṇyaka as belonging to Śaunaka. Thus in vol. i, p. 112, ed. Max Müller, he says: pañcamāraṇyaka auṣṇihatṛcāśītir iti khaṇḍe Śaunakena sūtritaṃ surūpakṛtnum ūtaya iti trīṇy endra sānasiṃ rayim iti dve iti. There is indeed in the fifth Āraṇyaka a chapter beginning with the words auṣṇihi tṛcāśītiḥ, in which the words quoted by Sāyaṇa occur^[5]. Similar quotations, in which the fifth Āraṇyaka is assigned to Śaunaka, are found in Sāyaṇa's commentary on the Āraṇyaka itself; see, for instance, p. 97, line 19, p. 116, line 3.

Thus it seems that the authorship of both the fourth and the fifth Āraṇyaka was ascribed to teachers belonging to the Sūtra period of Vedic literature, viz. to Śaunaka and to Āśvalāyana respectively. And so we find the case stated by both Professor Weber, in his 'Vorlesungen über indische Literaturgeschichte^[6],' and Dr. Rājendralāla Mitra, in the Introduction to his edition of the Aitareya Āraṇyaka^[7].

But we must ask ourselves: Are the two books of the Āraṇyaka collection, ascribed to those two authors, really two different books? It is a surprising fact that Ṣaḍguruśiṣya, while speaking of Āśvalāyana's authorship of the fourth book, and while at the same time intending, as he evidently does, to give a complete list of Śaunaka's compositions, does not mention the fifth Āraṇyaka among the works of that author. In order to account for this omission the conjecture seems to suggest itself that Ṣaḍguruśiṣya, when speaking of the fourth Āraṇyaka as belonging to Āśvalāyana, means the same work which Sāyaṇa sets down as the fifth, and which he ascribes to Śaunaka. At first sight this conjecture may seem perhaps rather hazardous or unnatural; however I believe that, if we compare the two texts themselves which are concerned, we shall find it very probable and even evident. What do those two Āraṇyaka books contain? The fourth is very short: it does not fill more than one page in the printed edition. Its contents consist exclusively of the text of the Mahānāmnī or Śakvarī verses, which seem to belong to a not less remote antiquity than the average of the Rig-veda hymns. They can indeed be considered as forming part of the Rig-veda Saṃhitā, and it is only on account of the peculiar mystical holiness ascribed to these verses, that they were not studied in the village but in the forest^[8], and were consequently received not into the body of the Saṃhitā itself, but into the Āraṇyaka. They are referred to in all Brāhmaṇa texts, and perhaps we can even go so far as to pronounce our opinion that some passages of the Rig-veda hymns themselves allude to the Śakvarī verses:

yac chakvarīṣu bṛhatā raveṇendre śushmam adadhātā Vasiṣṭhāḥ (Rig-veda VII, 33, 4).

ṛkāṃ tvaḥ poṣam āste pupuṣvān gāyatraṃ tvo gāyati śakvarīṣu (Rig-veda X, 71, 11).

So much for the fourth Āraṇyaka. The fifth contains a description of the Mahāvrata ceremony. To the same subject also the first book is devoted, with the difference that the first book is composed in the Brāhmaṇa style, the fifth in the Sūtra style^[9].

Now which of these two books can it be that Ṣaḍguruśiṣya reckons as belonging to the 'Āśvalāyanasūtraka?' It is impossible that it should be the fourth, for the Mahānāmnī verses never were considered by Indian theologians as the work of a human author; they shared in the apaurusheyatva of the Veda, and to say that they have been composed by Āśvalāyana, would be inconsistent with the most firmly established principles of the literary history of the Veda both as conceived by the Indians and by ourselves. And even if we were to admit that the Mahānāmnī verses can have been assigned, by an author like Ṣaḍguruśiṣya, to Āśvalāyana,—and we cannot admit this,—there is no possibility whatever that he can have used the expression 'Āśvalāyanasūtrakam' with regard to the Mahānāmnīs; to apply the designation of a Sūtra to the Mahānāmnī hymn would be no less absurd than to apply it to any Sūkta whatever of the Ṛk-Saṃhitā. On the other hand, the fifth book of the Āraṇyaka is a Sūtra; it is the only part of the whole body of the Āraṇyaka collection which is composed in the Sūtra style. And it treats of a special part of the Rig-veda ritual the rest of which is embodied in its entirety, with the omission only of that very part, in the two great Sūtras of Āśvalāyana. There seems to me, therefore, to be little doubt as to the fifth Āraṇyaka really being the text referred to by Ṣaḍguruśiṣya, though I do not know how to explain his setting down this book as the fourth. And I may add that there is a passage, hitherto, as far as I know, unnoticed, in Sāyaṇa's Sāma-veda commentary, in which that author directly assigns the fifth Āraṇyaka not, as in the Rig-veda commentary, to Śaunaka, but to Āśvalāyana. Sāyaṇa there says^[10]:

yathā bahvṛkām adhyāpakā mahāvrataprayogapratipādakam Āśvalāyananirmitaṃ kalpasūtram araṇye'dhīyamānāḥ pañcamam āraṇyakam iti vedatvena vyavaharanti.

Instead of asserting, therefore, that of the two last Āraṇyakas of the Aitareyinas the one is ascribed to Śaunaka, the other to Āśvalāyana, we must state the case otherwise: not two Āraṇyakas were, according to Sāyaṇa and Ṣaḍguruśiṣya, composed by those Sūtrakāras, but one, viz. the fifth, which forms a sort of supplement to the great body of the Sūtras of that Caraṇa, and which is ascribed either to Śaunaka or to Āśvalāyana. Perhaps further research will enable us to decide whether that Sūtra portion of the Āraṇyaka, or we may say quite as well, that Āraṇyaka portion of the Sūtra, belongs to the author of the Śrauta-sūtra, or should be considered as a remnant of a more ancient composition, of which the portion studied in the forest has survived, while the portion which was taught in the village was superseded by the more recent Āśvalāyana-sūtra.

There would be still many questions with which an Introduction to Āśvalāyana would have to deal; thus the relation between Āśvalāyana and Śaunaka, which we had intended to treat of here with reference to a special point, would have to be further discussed with regard to several other of its bearings, and the results which follow therefrom as to the position of Āśvalāyana in the history of Vedic literature would have to be stated. But we prefer to reserve the discussion of these questions for the General Introduction to the Gṛhya-sūtras.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

See Max Müller's History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, pp. 230 seqq.; Indische Studien, I, 102.

[2]:

This seems to me to be the meaning of sūtraṃ kṛtvā nyavedayat; p. 154 the case is similar to that where a pupil goes on his rounds for alms and announces (nivedayati) to his teacher what he has received. Prof. Max Müller translates these words differently; according to him they mean that Āśvalāyana 'made a Sūtra and taught it.'

[3]:

Comp. Prof. Bühler's article in the Journal As. Soc. of Bengal, 1866, pp. 149 seqq.

[4]:

Dvādaśādhyāyakaṃ sūtraṃ catushkaṃ gṛhyam eva ca caturthāraṇyakaṃ ceti hy Āśvalāyanasūtrakam.

[5]:

See p. 448 of Dr. Rājendralāla Mitra's edition in the Bibliotheca Indica.

[6]:

2nd edition, p. 53: Obwohl wir für das vierte Buch des letztern (i.e. of the Aitareya Āraṇyaka) sogar die directe Nachricht haben, dass es dem Āśvalāyana, dem Schüler eines Śaunaka angehört, so wie auch ferner für das fünfte Buch desselben dieser Śaunaka selbst als Urheber gegolten zu haben scheint, nach dem was Colebrooke Misc. Ess. I, 47 n. darüber berichtet.

[7]:

P. 11: If this assumption be admitted, the proper conclusion to be arrived at would also be that the whole of the fifth Book belongs to Śaunaka, and the whole of the fourth Book to Āśvalāyana. P. 12: The writings of both Āśvalāyana and Śaunaka which occur in the Āraṇyaka, etc.

[8]:

See Śāṅkhāyana-Gṛhya II, 12, 13.

[9]:

Thus Sāyaṇa, in his note on V, 1, 1, says: Nanu prathamāraṇyake^ऽpi atha mahāvratam Indro vai Vṛtraṃ hatvetyādinā mahāvrataprayogo^ऽbhihitaḥ, pañcame^ऽpi tasyaivābhidhāne punaruktiḥ syāt. nāyaṃ doṣaḥ, sūtrabrāhmaṇarūpeṇa tayor vibhedāt. pañcamāraṇyakam ṛṣiproktaṃ sūtraṃ, prathamāraṇyakan tv apaurusheyaṃ brāhmaṇaṃ. ata eva tatrārthavādaprapañcena sahitā vidhayaḥ śrūyante, pañcame tu na ko py arthavādo^ऽsti . . . . araṇya evaitad adhyeyam ity abhipretyādhyetāra āraṇyakande^ऽntarbhāvyādhīyate.

[10]:

Sāma-veda (Bibl. Indica), vol. i, p. 19.