The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c21.31

v1.c21.31

In general the Gṛihya Sūtras may be said to be the later scholastic codification of rules, formulas, and rites long practised, concerned chiefly with the orderly progress of an individual ideal life, and incidentally with such ceremonies as naturally occur in such a life, that is, besides rites from babyhood to marriage, fixed moon-rites, etc., those concerned with building, holidays, burial, etc. That they are not of Vedic age in their present form, though in substance reverting in part to Brāhmaṇa beginnings, may be concluded from their obvious posteriority in respect of language and metre (where verses are cited) to the Brāhmaṇas, not to speak of earlier Vedic texts, as well as from the fact that several Sūtras emanate from districts scarcely known even by name to the Brāhmaṇas. The general order of arrangement in the Gṛihya Sūtras is one conditioned by the subject-matter, which is to reveal the whole duty of man as a householder. Most of them begin with the marriage and continue with the birth of a child, the ceremonies at conception and at various stages before birth, at the birth itself, at the naming of the child, when he sees the sun, when he is fed, when his hair is cut, when he becomes a student, and when he returns home from his Guru (tutor) and becomes a householder. Then the child, now grown to a man, marries and the circle begins again. Finally the rite for the burial is described. A few texts take up the round of life at another point, that where the student-life begins. This is the procedure in the case of some of the Black Yajurveda texts (for example, the Mānava and Kāṭhaka Sūtras), but it makes no difference where one begins; each Sūtra follows out the life to the end, and the general uniformity shows that, whatever be the minor discrepancies and divergences of opinion (of which the authors are themselves well aware), the Gṛihya Sūtras as a whole are based upon one model, and that, whether in the northern or southern districts, the lives of orthodox Āryans were governed by a remarkable conformity of ritual. It is not improbable that, as has been suggested by Professor Oldenberg, many of the rites prescribed as general rules were nothing more than formulas of secret magic owned at first by certain families and afterwards become universal property².