The History of Indian Literature c8.31

c8.31

As we have found, in the Smṛiti, an independent basis for the Gṛihya-Sútras—in addition to the Bráhmaṇas, where but few points of contact with these Sútras can be traced—so too shall we find an independent basis for those Sútras the contents of which relate to language. In this case it is in the recitation of the songs and formulas at the sacrifice that we shall find it. Although, accordingly, these Sútras stand on a level with the Bráhmaṇas, which owe their origin to the same source, yet this must be understood as applying only to those views on linguistic relations which, being presupposed in the Sútras, must be long anterior to them. It must not be taken as applying to the works themselves, inasmuch as they present the results of these antecedent investigations in a collected and systematic form. Obviously also, it was a much more natural thing to attempt, in the first instance, to elucidate the relation of the prayer to the sacrifice, than to make the form in which the prayer itself was drawn up a subject of investigation. The more sacred the sacrificial performance grew, and the more fixed the form of worship gradually became, the greater became the importance of the prayers belonging to it, and the stronger their claim to the utmost possible purity and safety. To effect this, it was necessary, first, to fix the text of the prayers; secondly, to establish a correct pronunciation and recitation; and, lastly, to preserve the tradition of their origin. It was only after the lapse of time, and when by degrees their literal sense had become foreign to the phase into which the language had passed—and this was of course much later the case with the priests, who were familiar with them, than with the people at large—that it became necessary to take precautions for securing and establishing the sense also. To attain all these objects, those most conversant with the subject were obliged to give instruction to the ignorant, and circles were thus formed around them of travelling scholars, who made pilgrimages from one teacher to another according as they were attracted by the fame of special learning. These researches were naturally not confined to questions of language, but embraced the whole range of Brahmanical theology, extending in like manner to questions of worship, dogma, and speculation, all of which, indeed, were closely interwoven with each other. We must, at any rate, assume among the Brahmans of this period a very stirring intellectual life, in which even the women took an active part, and which accounts still further for the superiority maintained and exercised by the Brahmans over the rest of the people. Nor did the military caste hold aloof from these inquiries, especially after they had succeeded in securing a time of repose from external warfare. We have here a faithful copy of the scholastic period of the Middle Ages; sovereigns whose courts form the centres of intellectual life; Brahmans who with lively emulation carry on their inquiries into the highest questions the human mind can propound; women who with enthusiastic ardour plunge into the mysteries of speculation, impressing and astonishing men by the depth and loftiness of their opinions, and who—while in a state which, judging from description, seems to have been a kind of somnambulism—solve the questions proposed to them on sacred subjects. As to the quality of their solutions, and the value of all these inquiries generally, that is another matter. But neither have the scholastic subtleties any absolute worth in themselves; it is only the striving and the effort which ennobles the character of any such period.