The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c21.38

v1.c21.38

As the Gṛihya Sūtras in distinction from the Dharma are concerned with domestic superstitions, these may rightly be considered their peculiar contribution to the history of India. Of political and social life they contain almost nothing except as confined within the bounds of the family. The regular routine of the normal life contains a sufficiency of such superstitions, though the underlying reason for them is due in some cases more to mechanical adjustment to a supposed harmony than to spiritual fears. This is the case for example in the regulation that the initiation of the Brāhman, Kshatriya, and Vaiçya shall take place, respectively, in spring, summer, and autumn, in the eighth, eleventh, and twelfth years after conception, the respective seasons being supposed to represent the castes, as the years represent the metres regarded as peculiar to these castes. Deeper lies the origin of the following:—the rite to drive out of the bride the influence deadly to the husband and to convert it into an influence deadly to her possible paramour (Hir., *G.S.*, I, 7, 24, 1 f.); the prayer that the ‘weeping women’ (demons) and Vikeçī may not torment her, nor the Piçāchas of the womb, who devour flesh and bring death (*ibid.* 6, 19, 7); the scattering of rice and other grains on the heads of the newly wedded pair (*ibid.* 21, 6); and the corresponding rite according to which the husband ties barley about the wife’s head, here expressly ‘to have offspring’ (Āp., *G.S.*, VI, 14, 7). Naturally the conjugal relations offer a fruitful field for this sort of thing. Thus we have a rite to make a husband subject to his wife as well as to make her co-wives subject to her (*ibid.* III, 9, 5 f.) and another very peculiar rite, the object of which is to keep the wife faithful, in which she is regarded much as is the slave around whom, when suspected of estrangement, urine is poured from a horn to keep him magically at home (Hir., *G.S.*, I, 4, 14, 2).