Khadira-grihya-sutra
by Hermann Oldenberg | 1886 | 14,135 words
The Khadira-Grihya has evidently been composed with the intention of abridging Gobhila’s very detailed and somewhat lengthy treatise on the domestic rites The Grihya-sutra ascribed to Khadiracarya belongs to the Drahyayana school of the Sama-veda, which prevails in the south of the Indian peninsula, and it is based on the Gobhiliya-sutra. Alterna...
Preface
...Let us beget offspring.
Let us acquire many sons, and may they reach old age.
Loving, bright, with genial minds may we see a hundred autumns,
may we live a hundred autumns, may we hear a hundred autumns!
--p. 282.
This is part one of two of the Sacred Books of the East translation of the Grihya Sutras. The Grihya Sutras are a collection of late Vedic-era (ca. 500 BCE) household rituals and regulations, many reflecting much more ancient traditions. It is like reading a time-travelling ethnographer's field notes in Vedic India. Included are fertility and marriage ceremonies, ritual purity laws, plus material on initiations, funerals and other rites of passage. This volume also includes a complete Sanskrit transliteration of the text of the Khadira-Grihya-Sutra, rare for the SBE series.