The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c10.2

v1.c10.2

FOR the latest stages of the Vedic religion on its practical side the authorities are the Çrauta and the Gṛhya Sūtras,¹ which deal with different but complementary spheres, and which incidentally preserve for us a considerable amount of formulae, prose and verse, which by accident or other cause have not found a place in any of the Saṁhitās preserved to us. The necessity of some manuals for the actual practice of the great complicated rites of the sacrifice must have been felt from an early period, but we have not now extant any of these manuals. The Çrauta Sūtras which are now extant are all without exception later than the older Brāhmaṇas, and, while the ritual which they reveal is in general harmony with that supposed by the Brāhmaṇas, it would be idle to suppose that it actually represents it with perfect accuracy. This can be seen by one simple point: the Brāhmaṇas often show that on questions of the exact mode of the performance of certain rites there were considerable difference of opinions: in some cases the Brāhmaṇas reject definitely certain views, in others they allow varied views to stand as equally legitimate, but in the Sūtras in the great majority of such cases merely one view is laid down, the others having presumably come to be disapproved in the school in which the Sūtra arose. On the other hand, the Sūtras often give optional forms of procedure for which the Brāhmaṇas contain no hint, evidence of the development of practice in the schools. Moreover, there is clear proof that no Sūtra represents rigidly any one Saṁhitā: even when, as is normal, a Sūtra follows generally some Saṁhitā it is quite ready to accept portions of its material from another.² The Sūtras, therefore, while often giving valuable confirmation and explanation of the Brāhmaṇas, cannot be regarded as contemporary evidence of the practices of the Brāhmaṇas, and this conclusion based entirely on the ritual is confirmed by many lines of evidence. In addition to dealing with many rites which seem clearly elaborations and modifications of older rites, the Sūtras in language are markedly more modern than the Brāhmaṇas, approximating closely to the classical speech, from which they differ in the main in the use of forms of incorrect grammatical formation.³ From this fact a conclusion may fairly be drawn with regard to their chronology: it can scarcely be supposed that works, not popular in character, which so flatly disregard in some points the rules of Pāṇini, should have been produced after the general acceptance of the authority of that grammarian, which falls probably in the third century B. C. at latest, and thus the period of the Sūtras may be roughly set down at from 400 B. C. to 200 B. C., though neither date can be regarded as more than approximate.¹