The Sanskrit Epics, page 989
Very closely connected with this work is the Dharma Sūtra of Hiraṇyakeçin; for the differences between the two do not go much beyond varieties of reading. In keeping with this relationship is the tradition that Hiraṇyakeçin branched off from the Āpastambas and founded a new school in the Konkan country on the south-west (about Goa). The lower limit for this separation from the Āpastambas is about 500 A.D., when a Hiraṇyakeçin Brahman is mentioned in an inscription. The main importance of this Sūtra lies in its confirming, by the parallelism of its text, the genuineness of by far the greatest part of Āpastamba’s work. It forms two (26–27) of the twenty-nine chapters of the Kalpa Sūtra belonging to the school of Hiraṇyakeçin.
The third Dharma Sūtra, generally styled a dharmaçāstra in the MSS., is that of Baudhāyana. Its position, however, within the Kalpa Sūtra of its school is not so fixed as in the two previous cases. Its subject-matter, when compared with that of Āpastamba’s Dharma Sūtra, indicates that it is the older of the two, just as the more archaic and awkward style of Baudhāyana’s Gṛihya Sūtra shows the latter to be earlier than the corresponding work of Āpastamba. The Baudhāyana school cannot be traced at the present day, but it appears to have belonged to Southern India, where the famous Vedic commentator Sāyaṇa was a member of it in the fourteenth century. The subjects dealt with in their Dharma Sūtra are multifarious, including the duties of the four religious orders, the mixed castes, various kinds of sacrifice, purification, penance, auspicious ceremonies, duties of kings, criminal justice, examination of witnesses, law of inheritance and marriage, the position of women. The fourth section, which is almost entirely composed in çlokas, is probably a modern addition, and even the third is of somewhat doubtful age.
With the above works must be classed the well-preserved law-book of Gautama. Though it does not form part of a Kalpa Sūtra, it must at one time have been connected with a Vedic school; for the Gautamas are mentioned as a subdivision of the Rāṇāyanīya branch of the Sāmaveda, and Kumārila’s statement that Gautama’s treatise originally belonged to that Veda is confirmed by the fact that its twenty-sixth section is taken word for word from the Sāmavidhāna Brāhmaṇa. Though entitled a Dharma Çāstra, it is in style and character a regular Dharma Sūtra. It is composed entirely in prose aphorisms, without any admixture of verse, as in the other works of this class. Its varied contents resemble and are treated much in the same way as those of the Dharma Sūtra of Baudhāyana. The latter has indeed been shown to contain passages based on or borrowed from Gautama’s work, which is therefore the oldest Dharma Sūtra that has been preserved, or at least published, and can hardly date from later than about 500 B.C.
Another work of the Sūtra type, and belonging to the Vedic period, is the Dharma Çāstra of Vasishṭha. It has survived only in inferior MSS., and without the preserving influence of a commentary. It contains thirty chapters (adhyāyas), of which the last five appear to consist for the most part of late additions. Many of the Sūtras, not only here, but even in the older portions, are hopelessly corrupt. The prose aphorisms of the work are intermingled with verse, the archaic trishṭubh metre being frequently employed instead of the later çlokas of Manu and others. The contents, which bear the Dharma Sūtra stamp, produce the impression of antiquity in various respects. Thus here, as in the Dharma Sūtra of Āpastamba, only six forms of marriage are recognised, instead of the orthodox eight. Kumārila states that in his time Vasishṭha’s law-book, while acknowledged to have general authority, was studied by followers of the Rigveda only. That he meant the present work and no other, is proved by the quotations from it which he gives, and which are found in the published text. As Vasishṭha, in citing Vedic Saṃhitās and Sūtras, shows a predilection for works belonging to the North of India, it is to be inferred that he or his school belonged to that part. Vasishṭha gives a quotation from Gautama which appears to refer to a passage in the extant text of the latter. His various quotations from Manu are derived, not from the later famous law-book, but evidently from a legal Sūtra related to our Manu. On the other hand, the extant text of Manu contains a quotation from Vasishṭha which actually occurs in the published edition of the latter. Hence Vasishṭha’s work must be later than that of Gautama, and earlier than that of Manu. It is further probable that the original part of the Sūtra of a school connected with the Rigveda and belonging to the North dates from a period some centuries before our era.
Some Dharma Sūtras are known from quotations only, the oldest being those mentioned in other Dharma Sūtras. Particular interest attaches to one of these, the Sūtra of Manu, or the Mānavas, because of its relationship to the famous Mānava dharma-çāstra. Of the numerous quotations from it in Vasishṭha, six are found unaltered or but slightly modified in our text of Manu. One passage cited in Vasishṭha is composed partly in prose and partly in verse, the latter portion recurring in Manu. The metrical quotations show a mixture of trishṭubh and çloka verses, like other Dharma Sūtras. These quoted fragments probably represent a Mānava dharma-sūtra which supplied the basis of our Mānava dharma-çāstra or Code of Manu.
Fragments of a legal treatise in prose and verse, attributed to the brothers Çankha and Likhita, who became proverbial for justice, have been similarly preserved. This work, which must have been extensive, and dealt with all branches of law, is already quoted as authoritative by Parāçara. The statement of Kumārila (700 A.D.) that it was connected with the Vājasaneyin school of the White Yajurveda is borne out by the quotations from it which have survived.
Sūtras need not necessarily go back to the oldest period of Indian law, as this style of composition was never entirely superseded by the use of metre. Thus there is a Vaikhānasa dharma-sūtra in four praçnas, which, as internal evidence shows, cannot be earlier than the third century A.D. It refers to the cult of Nārāyaṇa (Vishṇu), and mentions Wednesday by the name of budha-vāra, “day of Mercury.” It is not a regular Dharma Sūtra, for it contains nothing connected with law in the strict sense, but is only a treatise on domestic law (gṛihya-dharma). It deals with the religious duties of the four orders (āçramas), especially with those of the forest hermit. For it is with the latter order that the Vaikhānasas, or followers of Vikhanas, are specially connected. They seem to have been one of the youngest offshoots of the Taittirīya school.
Looking back on the vast mass of ritual and usage regulated by the Sūtras, we are tempted to conclude that it was entirely the conscious work of an idle priesthood, invented to enslave and maintain in spiritual servitude the minds of the Hindu people. But the progress of research tends to show that the basis even of the sacerdotal ritual of the Brahmans was popular religious observances. Otherwise it would be hard to understand how Brahmanism acquired and retained such a hold on the population of India. The originality of the Brahmans consisted in elaborating and systematising observances which they already found in existence. This they certainly succeeded in doing to an extent unknown elsewhere.
Comparative studies have shown that many ritual practices go back to the period when the Indians and Persians were still one people. Thus the sacrifice was even then the centre of a developed ceremonial, and was tended by a priestly class. Many terms of the Vedic ritual already existed then, especially soma, which was pressed, purified through a sieve, mixed with milk, and offered as the main libation. Investiture with a sacred cord was, as we have seen, also known, and was in its turn based on the still older ceremony of the initiation of youths on entering manhood. The offering of gifts to the gods in fire is Indo-European, as is shown by the agreement of the Greeks, Romans, and Indians. Indo-European also is that part of the marriage ritual in which the newly wedded couple walk round the nuptial fire, the bridegroom presenting a burnt offering and the bride an offering of grain; for among the Romans also the young pair walked round the altar from left to right before offering bread (far) in the fire. Indo-European, too, must be the practice of scattering rice or grain (as a symbol of fertility) over the bride and bridegroom, as prescribed in the Sūtras; for it is widely diffused among peoples who cannot have borrowed it. Still older is the Indian ceremony of producing the sacrificial fire by the friction of two pieces of wood. Similarly the practice in the construction of the Indian fire-altar of walling up in the lowest layer of bricks the heads of five different victims, including that of a man, goes back to an ancient belief that a building can only be firmly erected when a man or an animal is buried with its foundations.
Finally, we have as a division of the Sūtras, concerned with religious practice, the Çulva Sūtras. The thirtieth and last praçna of the great Kalpa Sūtra of Āpastamba is a treatise of this class. These are practical manuals giving the measurements necessary for the construction of the vedi, of the altars, and so forth. They show quite an advanced knowledge of geometry, and constitute the oldest Indian mathematical works.
The whole body of Vedic works composed in the Sūtra style, is according to the Indian traditional view, divided into six classes called Vedāngas (“members of the Veda”). These are çikshā or phonetics; chhandas, or metre; vyākaraṇa, or grammar; nirukta, or etymology; kalpa, or religious practice; and jyotisha, or astronomy. The first four were meant as aids to the correct reciting and understanding of the sacred texts; the last two deal with religious rites or duties, and their proper seasons. They all have their origin in the exigencies of religion, and the last four furnish the beginnings or (in one case) the full development of five branches of science that flourished in the post-Vedic period. In the fourth and sixth group the name of the class has been applied to designate a particular work representing it.
Of kalpa we have already treated at length above. No work representing astronomy has survived from the Vedic period; for the Vedic calendar, called jyotisha, the two recensions of which profess to belong to the Rigveda and Yajurveda respectively, dates from far on in the post-Vedic age.
The Taittirīya Āraṇyaka (vii. 1) already mentions çikshā, or phonetics, a subject which even then appears to have dealt with letters, accents, quantity, pronunciation, and euphonic rules. Several works bearing the title of çikshā have been preserved, but they are only late supplements of Vedic literature. They are short manuals containing directions for Vedic recitation and correct pronunciation. The earliest surviving results of phonetic studies are of course the Saṃhitā texts of the various Vedas, which were edited in accordance with euphonic rules. A further advance was made by the constitution of the pada-pāṭha, or word-text of the Vedas, which, by resolving the euphonic combinations and giving each word (even the parts of compounds) separately, in its original form unmodified by phonetic rules, furnished a basis for all subsequent studies. Yāska, Pāṇini, and other grammarians do not always accept the analyses of the Padapāṭhas when they think they understand a Vedic form better. Patanjali even directly contests their authoritativeness. The treatises really representative of Vedic phonetics are the Prātiçākhyas, which are directly connected with the Saṃhitā and Padapāṭha. It is their object to determine the relation of these to each other. In so doing they furnish a systematic account of Vedic euphonic combination, besides adding phonetic discussions to secure the correct recitation of the sacred texts. They are generally regarded as anterior to Pāṇini, who shows unmistakable points of contact with them. It is perhaps more correct to suppose that Pāṇini used the present Prātiçākhyas in an older form, as, whenever he touches on Vedic sandhi, he is always less complete in his statements than they are, while the Prātiçākhyas, especially that of the Atharva-veda, are dependent on the terminology of the grammarians. Four of these treatises have been preserved and published. One belongs to the Rigveda, another to the Atharva-, and two to the Yajur-veda, being attached to the Vājasaneyi and the Taittirīya Saṃhitā respectively. They are so called because intended for the use of each respective branch (çākhā) of the Vedas.
The Prātiçākhya Sūtra of the Rigveda is an extensive metrical work in three books, traditionally attributed to Çaunaka, the teacher of Āçvalāyana; it may, however, in its present form only be a production of the school of Çaunaka. This Prātiçākhya was later epitomised, with the addition of some supplementary matter, in a short treatise entitled Upalekha. The Taittirīya Prātiçākhya is particularly interesting owing to the various peculiar names of teachers occurring among the twenty which it mentions. The Vājasaneyi Prātiçākhya, in eight chapters, names Kātyāyana as its author, and mentions Çaunaka among other predecessors. The Atharva-veda Prātiçākhya, in four chapters, belonging to the school of the Çaunakas, is more grammatical than the other works of this class.
Metre, to which there are many scattered references in the Brāhmaṇas, is separately treated in a section of the Çānkhāyana Çrauta Sūtra (7, 27), in the last three sections (paṭalas) of the Rigveda Prātiçākhya, and especially in the Nidāna Sūtra, which belongs to the Sāmaveda. A part of the Chhandaḥ Sūtra of Pingala also deals with Vedic metres; but though it claims to be a Vedānga, it is in reality a late supplement, dealing chiefly with post-Vedic prosody, on which, indeed, it is the standard authority.
Finally, Kātyāyana’s two Anukramaṇīs or indices, mentioned below, each contains a section, varying but slightly from the other, on Vedic metres. These sections are, however, almost identical in matter with the sixteenth paṭala of the Rigveda Prātiçākhya, and may possibly be older than the corresponding passage in the Prātiçākhya, though the latter work as a whole is doubtless anterior to the Anukramaṇī.
The Padapāṭhas show that their authors had not only made investigations as to pronunciation and Sandhi, but already knew a good deal about the grammatical analysis of words; for they separate both the parts of compounds and the prefixes of verbs, as well as certain suffixes and terminations of nouns. They had doubtless already distinguished the four parts of speech (padajātāni), though these are first mentioned by Yāska as nāman, or “noun” (including sarva-nāman, “representing all nouns” or “pronouns”), ākhyāta, “predicate,” i.e. “verb”; upasarga, “supplement,” i.e. “preposition”; nipāta, “incidental addition,” i.e. “particle.” It is perhaps to the separation of these categories that the name for grammar, vyākaraṇa, originally referred, rather than to the analysis of words. Even the Brāhmaṇas bear evidence of linguistic investigations, for they mention various grammatical terms, such as “letter” (varṇa), “masculine” (vṛishan), “number” (vachana), “case-form” (vibhakti).Still more such references are to be found in the Āraṇyakas, the Upanishads, and the Sūtras. But the most important information we have of pre-Pāṇinean grammar is that found in Yāska’s work.
Grammatical studies must have been cultivated to a considerable extent before Yāska’s time, for he distinguishes a Northern and an Eastern school, besides mentioning nearly twenty predecessors, among whom Çākaṭāyana, Gārgya, and Çākalya are the most important. By the time of Yāska grammarians had learned to distinguish clearly between the stem and the formative elements of words; recognising the personal terminations and the tense affixes of the verb on the one hand, and primary (kṛit) or secondary (taddhita) nominal suffixes on the other. Yāska has an interesting discussion on the theory of Çākaṭāyana, which he himself follows, that nouns are derived from verbs. Gārgya and some other grammarians, he shows, admit this theory in a general way, but deny that it is applicable to all nouns. He criticises their objections, and finally dismisses them as untenable. On Çākaṭāyana’s theory of the verbal origin of nouns the whole system of Pāṇini is founded. The sūtra of that grammarian contains hundreds of rules dealing with Vedic forms; but these are of the nature of exceptions to the main body of his rules, which are meant to describe the Sanskrit language. His work almost entirely dominates the subsequent literature. Though belonging to the middle of the Sūtra period, it must be regarded as the definite starting-point of the post-Vedic age. Coming to be regarded as an infallible authority, Pāṇini superseded all his predecessors, whose works have consequently perished. Yāska alone survives, and that only because he was not directly a grammarian; for his work represents, and alone represents, the Vedānga “etymology.”
Yāska’s Nirukta is in reality a Vedic commentary, and is older by some centuries than any other exegetical work preserved in Sanskrit. Its bases are the Nighaṇṭus, collections of rare or obscure Vedic words, arranged for the use of teachers. Yāska had before him five such collections. The first three contain groups of synonyms, the fourth specially difficult words, and the fifth a classification of the Vedic gods. These Yāska explained for the most part in the twelve books of his commentary (to which two others were added later). In so doing he adduces as examples a large number of verses, chiefly from the Rigveda, which he interprets with many etymological remarks.
The first book is an introduction, dealing with the principles of grammar and exegesis. The second and third elucidate certain points in the synonymous nighaṇṭus; Books IV.–VI. comment on the fourth section, and VII.–XII. on the fifth. The Nirukta, besides being very important from the point of view of exegesis and grammar, is highly interesting as the earliest specimen of Sanskrit prose of the classical type, considerably earlier than Pāṇini himself. Yāska already uses essentially the same grammatical terminology as Pāṇini, employing, for instance, the same words for root (dhātu), primary, and secondary suffixes. But he must have lived a long time before Pāṇini; for a considerable number of important grammarians’ names are mentioned between them. Yāska must, therefore, go back to the fifth century, and undoubtedly belongs to the beginning of the Sūtra period.
