Philosophy and Religion / Grihya-Sûtra

Pâraskara-Grihya-Sûtra

Introduction

THE Grihya-sûtra of Pâraskara, which belongs to the White Yagur-veda and forms an appendix to Kâtyâyana's Srauta-sûtra, has been edited, with a German translation, by the scholar who was the first to make a Grihya text accessible to Orientalists and to begin to grapple with the first and most serious difficulties that beset its interpretation, and who has continued since to do more than anyone else towards elucidating that important branch of Vedic literature. It would be very unbecoming in any one engaged in the study of Grihya texts, not to acknowledge most warmly the debt of gratitude which he owes to Professor Stenzler. At the same time the respect due to the veteran editor and interpreter of Âsvalâyana and Pâraskara not only allows, but requires that one who proposes to himself the same task at which Prof. Stenzler has worked with so much learning, should state as clearly as possible what that distinguished scholar has left for others to do, and why one who prepares an English translation of Pâraskara has a very different task from merely translating into English the German translation of Prof. Stenzler.

If I may venture to express in one word the difference between Prof. Stenzler's method, as I understand it, for getting at the meaning of a doubtful or obscure passage, and the method which I have endeavoured to follow, I should say that with Prof. Stenzler the first step and, I believe, in many cases also the last step is to ask how Gayarâma and Râmakrishna understand the passage in question, while I hold that we ought rather to make ourselves independent from those commentators in the sense in which Prof. Max Müller once expressed himself¹, 'not that I ever despise the traditional interpretation which the commentators have preserved to us, but because I think that, after having examined it, we have a right to judge for ourselves.' There exists a commentary on the Pâraskara-Grihya which far surpasses in trustworthiness Gayarâma's Sagganavallabha and Râmakrishna's Samskâraganapati, and which is not composed by an author who, as says Goethe,

—im Auslegen ist munter;
Legt er nicht aus, so legt er unter.

But the leaves of that commentary are scattered through a good many volumes. Here we find a few lines of it in the Satapatha Brâhmana or in Kâtyâyana's Srauta-sûtra; there Sâṅkhâyana or Âsvalâyana has preserved a word or a sentence that belongs to it; or the law-books of Manu or Yâgñavalkya help us to understand a difficult or doubtful aphorism of our text. In one word: the only true commentary on a work like Pâraskara's Grihya is that which the ancient literature itself furnishes. No one will say that in Prof. Stenzler's translation and notes this commentary has not been consulted. But it has been consulted perhaps not quite as much as it ought to have been, and Râmakrishna and Gayarâma have been consulted too much. They have been consulted and followed in many instances, where a continued consideration of what can be the meaning of a word and what can not, and of what the parallel texts say with regard to the subject in question, would have shown that those commentators, instead of interpreting Pâraskara's meaning, father on him vague opinions of their own.

Perhaps it will not be out of place here to point our criticism, lest it should be deemed unjust, by a few remarks on a single passage of Pâraskara in which the difference of Prof. Stenzler's way of translating and of our own becomes manifest. Of the numerous passages which could be selected for this purpose, I choose Sûtra I, 2, 5, belonging to the description of the setting up of the sacred domestic fire. The text of that Sûtra runs thus:

5. aranipradûnam eke.

Prof. Stenzler translates as follows:

'Einige sagen, es müsse durch Reibhölzer erzeugtes Feuer sein.'

The two Sûtras which precede give a description of that ceremony from which evidently the opinion of the 'eke' mentioned in this Sûtra differs, or to which they find it necessary to add something. Those Sûtras run thus:

3. After he has fetched fire from the house of a Vaisya who is rich in cattle—

4. All ceremonies are performed as at the cooking of the kâtushprâsya food².

It seems evident that the Âkâryas to whom the opinion spoken of in Sûtra 5 belongs, add, or perhaps substitute, to the fetching of the fire which is to be worshipped as the sacrificer's domestic fire, from a rich Vaisya's house, another rite in which an arani, i.e. a stick for kindling the fire by attrition, is made use of in some way or other.

Now if this may be accepted as a vague expression of the general purport of the Sûtra, what is the literal meaning of the words? 'Some (teachers),' it says, '(prescribe) the pradâna of the kindling stick (or, of the kindling sticks).'

What does pradâna mean? Gayarâma says,

'prasabda upasabdârthe. aranyupâdânakam eka âkâryâ ikkhanti.'

That is: 'The word pra stands in the sense of the word upa. Some teachers desire that it (i.e. the fire) should have the kindling sticks as its physical basis³.'

Thus, if Gayarâma is right, Prof. Stenzler's translation would be justified. But can we acquiesce indeed in simply accepting the commentator's opinion? Pradâna is pradâna and not upâdâna, as pradadâti is not upâdatte. Pradadâti means 'he hands over,' and pradâna 'the handing over.' This is an established fact, and an interpreter of a Vedic text should not allow himself to be induced by a statement like that of Gayarâma about the preposition pra standing in the sense of upa, to abate one iota of it. Thus we are obliged, until passages have been discovered which modify our knowledge of what pradâna means—but such passages most certainly will never be discovered—to translate:

5. Some (teachers say that) the handing over of the kindling sticks (takes place).

We should give that translation even if we were not able to find an explanation for it. It appears that Prof. Stenzler, as far as we can judge from his note, has not even thought of the possibility of disregarding the authority of Gayarâma and Râmakrishna, or of looking through the parallel texts to see whether they do not throw light on what that 'handing over of the kindling sticks' signifies. The text to be consulted first is of course Kâtyâyana's Srauta-sûtra. As the Srauta ritual contains a description of an âdhâna which is in some way the prototype of the corresponding Grihya ceremony, we may possibly expect to discover, in the course of that description, the statements regarding the arani-pradâna for which we are searching. Now Kâtyâyana⁴, having described the setting up of the fire in the gârhapatyâgâra, states that at sunset the sacrificer and his wife sit down to the west of the fire which has just been established, and then the Adhvaryu hands over to them the two kindling sticks⁵. The Paddhati, in describing that act, goes into further details. The Adhvaryu hands over to the sacrificer the two Aranis, which, as required by custom, are wrapped up in new clothes. The wife takes the adharârani from his hand and puts it on her lap; the sacrificer puts the uttarârani on his lap, and they do homage to them with flowers, saffron, sandal wood, &c.; then, after the performance of some other ceremonies, they put the two Aranis away on a chair or bench. The two Aranis have to be kept by the sacrificer; if they are lost or burnt or destroyed in any other way, other Aranis must be procured, and by their attrition a new fire must be kindled⁶.

Âpastamba likewise mentions, in his description of the Agnyâdhâna⁷, the handing over of the two Aranis, and indicates a Mantra which the Adhvaryu recites in giving them to the sacrificer, and two other Mantras with the one of which the sacrificer receives them, while he recites the other over the Aranis, after having taken them into his hands.

Finally we may quote here, as bearing witness to the custom of the Aranipradâna, a passage taken from Nârâyana's commentary on the Sâṅkhâyana-Grihya. Though the decisive words in that passage rest only on the authority of the commentator and not of the Sûtrakâra himself, they deserve to be taken notice of, as they are not subject to the suspicion that they could be influenced by a misunderstanding of that very Sûtra of Pâraskara of which we are treating. Nârâyana says, in his explanation of Sâṅkhâyana I, 1, 10⁸: 'To the west of the fire the sacrificer, and southwards (of him) the wife sits down. The handing over of the kindling sticks does not take place. For it is a fire fetched (from a Vaisya's house, &c.) which is inaugurated here⁹.' Then the commentator goes on to quote a Sloka:

'The handing over of the Aranis which the Adhvaryu sometimes performs,

'Is not in accordance with the opinion of Suyagña¹⁰; he does not approve of kindling the fire by attrition¹¹:

Thus, I think, no doubt can remain as to the real meaning of Pâraskara's Sûtra: it means what its words signify and what is in accordance with Kâtyâyana and Âpastamba, and it does not mean what the commentators most gratuitously would make it mean.

Perhaps I have dwelt here too long on the interpretation of a few words which are of no peculiar interest in themselves. But I venture to hope that the discussion on these words will serve as a specimen, by which the fundamental difference of two methods of handling our texts may be discerned. Let us never forget how much we owe to the scholars who have followed the first of these methods, but for ourselves let us choose the second.

Footnotes

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