The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c21.4

v1.c21.4

The content of the Gṛihya Sūtras, as is implied by the name, is narrower than that of the Dharma Sūtras. The first contain, however, to all students of folk-lore a store-house of material in regard to rites and superstitions connected with home life, such as no other body of literature in the world presents. In the first place, the life of man is traced religiously from boyhood to burial. Every important phase of a man's existence is accompanied with its appropriate rite; and, incidentally, what to do and what not to do, injunctions, prohibitions, taboos, are taught as general rules of conduct. The greater events, birth, marriage, death, are described in their religious setting, each with minute detail, so that not only are the sacred texts cited which should be repeated on every occasion, but the physical acts to which the texts are ancillary are described. For example, such a text must be repeated while a dead man's bones are being collected. The one who collects them must pick them up with such and such fingers and place them in just such a jar. The wedding verses are indicated; the bride must make just so many steps and pour out grain with her hands held in just such a position, etc. Some of the Vedic schools, instead of embracing all the Sūtras in one work as a Kalpa Sūtra, have apparently laid so much stress on these domestic rites that the manuals have become independent works, thus fore-shadowing what happened later in the case of the Çāstras. The complete work, embracing all kinds of Sūtras, belongs, as was to be expected, to the Yajurveda schools, since the priests of this Veda were from the beginning particularly concerned with manual exercises, in arranging the altar, etc., and the details of sacrifice; while the priests of the other Vedas had to do more with the recitation and chanting of the sacred texts. Nevertheless, the literature of the Rigveda also contains both Çrauta and Gṛihya Sūtras, as does that of the Sāmaveda. Finally, the Atharvaveda possesses not only a Vāitāna Çrauta Sūtra but a Kauçika Sūtra, which is in part a Gṛihya Sūtra but contains also directions for carrying out the many magic ceremonies connected with the text of that unique Veda.