Book Description

Most of the questions referring to the Grihya-sutra of svalyana will be treated of more conveniently in connection with the different subjects which we shall have to discuss in our General Introduction to the Grihya-sutras. Here I wish only to call attention to a well-known passage of Shadgurusishya, in which that commentator gives some statements on the works composed by svalyana and by his teacher Saunaka. As an important point in that passage has, as far as I can see, been misunderstood by several eminent scholars, I may perhaps be allowed here to try and correct that misunderstanding, though the point stands in a less direct connection with the Grihya-sutra than with another side of the literary activity of svalyana. Shadgurusishya, before speaking of svalyana, makes the following statements with regard to svalyana's teacher, Saunaka. 'There was,' he says, 'the Skala Samhit (of the Rig-veda), and the Bshkala Samhit; following these two Samhits and the twenty-one Brhmanas, adopting principally the Aitareyaka and supplementing it by the other texts, he who was revered by the whole number of great Rishis composed the first Kalpa-sutra.' He then goes on to speak of svalyana;'Saunaka's pupil was the venerable svalyana. He who knew everything he had learnt from that teacher, composed a Sutra and announced (to Saunaka that he had done so).' Saunaka then destroyed his own Sutra, and determined thatsvalyana's Sutra should be adopted by the students of that Vedic Skh. Thus, says Shadgurusishya, there were twelve works of Saunaka by which a correct knowledge of the Rig-veda was preserved, and three works of svalyana. Saunaka's dasa granths were, the five Anukramanis, the two Vidbnas, the Brhaddaivata, the Prtiskhya, and a Smrta work. svalyana, on the other hand, composed the Srauta-sutra in twelve Adhyyas, the Grihya in four Adhyyas, and the fourth ranyaka: this is svalyana's great Sutra composition.