Oldenberg establishes the author's name the slow way, by agreement across independent lists rather than by picking the best-attested form. The Sâmbavya-Grihya's roll of teachers, the Âsvalâyana-Grihya III, 4, and the Sâmbavya's own closing invocation — "Suyagna Sânkhâyanas tripyatu", may Suyagna Sânkhâyana satiate himself with the water offering — converge, and he takes the convergence: "we shall be justified in following rather the unanimous statements of the texts previously quoted." The name is not read off one authority; it is where several stop disagreeing.
The Grihya-Sûtras: Rules of Vedic Domestic Ceremonies, Part I — SBE Vol. 29 (trans. Hermann Oldenberg, 1886)
Open to all
page 1
The translator’s English as printed (Hermann Oldenberg). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
In the SAambavya-Grihya (Indische Studien, XV, 154) the corresponding passage runs thus:
Gargya- Gautama- Sakalya- Babhravya- Mandattavya
1 See IV, 5, 9.
B 2
p. 4
[sic]- Mazdikey4k Suyagiia- Samkhydyana- Gatukarnyeyah [sic] Paimga [sic]- Sambavy’-Aitareyah.
The same Grvthya still more explicitly bears witness to the name of Suyagiia Sankhayana, by adding at the end of the list from which these names are quoted the following words: Suyagiia Sakhayanas [sic] tr7[pya]tu, i. e. ‘May Suyagiia Sankhayana satiate himself (with the water offering).
In the Asvalayana-Grihya III, 4, we read:
Kaholam Kaushitakamz Mahakaushitakam Paingyam Mahdapaingyam Suyagiam Sankhayanam Aitareyam Mahaitareyam.
We may also quote here a K4rik4 given by Narayana!
in his great commentary on the Sankhayana-Grzhya
(I, 1, 10):
Atrarazipradanam yad adhvaryu kurute kvakit?
matam tan na Suyagiiasya, mathitam so tra neâkhati.
It would perhaps be hazardous to claim for the author of this K4arika the authority of an independent witness, for very likely he may have derived his knowledge from the lists of teachers which we have quoted before. But at all events the concordance of the three Grihya texts furnishes
_a proof which, I think, cannot be set aside by another testimony which we must mention now. At the end of the Kaushitaki-Arazyaka (Adhyaya 15) we find a Vamsa or list of the teachers by whom the knowledge contained in that Arazyaka is supposed to have been handed down. The opening words of this list run thus:
‘Om! Now follows the Vamsa. Adoration to the Brahman! Adoration to the teachers! We have learnt (this text) from Guz4khya S4nkhadyana, Guvdkhya SAnkhayana from Kahola Kaushitaki, Kahola Kaushitaki from Uddalaka Aruzi, &c.’
It is a very natural supposition that the author of this list intended to begin with the name of the Doctor eponymus, if we may say so, of the Satras of his school, and then to proceed to name the Doctor eponymus of the Brahmanas, and after him the more ancient teachers and
1 Manuscr. Chambers 712 (Berlin Royal Library), fol. 12b.
2 Comp. Paraskara-Grthya I, 2, 5: aravipradinam eke.
p. 5
page 1
In the SAambavya-Grihya (Indische Studien, XV, 154) the corresponding passage runs thus:
Gargya- Gautama- Sakalya- Babhravya- Mandattavya
1 See IV, 5, 9.
B 2
p. 4
[sic]- Mazdikey4k Suyagiia- Samkhydyana- Gatukarnyeyah [sic] Paimga [sic]- Sambavy’-Aitareyah.
The same Grvthya still more explicitly bears witness to the name of Suyagiia Sankhayana, by adding at the end of the list from which these names are quoted the following words: Suyagiia Sakhayanas [sic] tr7[pya]tu, i. e. ‘May Suyagiia Sankhayana satiate himself (with the water offering).
In the Asvalayana-Grihya III, 4, we read:
Kaholam Kaushitakamz Mahakaushitakam Paingyam Mahdapaingyam Suyagiam Sankhayanam Aitareyam Mahaitareyam.
We may also quote here a K4rik4 given by Narayana!
in his great commentary on the Sankhayana-Grzhya
(I, 1, 10):
Atrarazipradanam yad adhvaryu kurute kvakit?
matam tan na Suyagiiasya, mathitam so tra neâkhati.
It would perhaps be hazardous to claim for the author of this K4arika the authority of an independent witness, for very likely he may have derived his knowledge from the lists of teachers which we have quoted before. But at all events the concordance of the three Grihya texts furnishes
_a proof which, I think, cannot be set aside by another testimony which we must mention now. At the end of the Kaushitaki-Arazyaka (Adhyaya 15) we find a Vamsa or list of the teachers by whom the knowledge contained in that Arazyaka is supposed to have been handed down. The opening words of this list run thus:
‘Om! Now follows the Vamsa. Adoration to the Brahman! Adoration to the teachers! We have learnt (this text) from Guz4khya S4nkhadyana, Guvdkhya SAnkhayana from Kahola Kaushitaki, Kahola Kaushitaki from Uddalaka Aruzi, &c.’
It is a very natural supposition that the author of this list intended to begin with the name of the Doctor eponymus, if we may say so, of the Satras of his school, and then to proceed to name the Doctor eponymus of the Brahmanas, and after him the more ancient teachers and
1 Manuscr. Chambers 712 (Berlin Royal Library), fol. 12b.
2 Comp. Paraskara-Grthya I, 2, 5: aravipradinam eke.
p. 5
AND HE REFUSES TO COUNT A WITNESS TWICE. A Kârikâ quoted in Nârâyana's commentary agrees with those teacher-lists, and Oldenberg will not bank it: "It would perhaps be hazardous to claim for the author of this Kârikâ the authority of an independent witness, for very likely he may have derived his knowledge from the lists of teachers which we have quoted before." A source that draws on your other sources is not corroboration, however much it looks like a fourth voice. This estate learned the same lesson from its own reception reporting, where seventeen mentions of a broadcast resolved on inspection into four. The failure is identical in shape and a century and a half apart: agreement counted, provenance not.
THEN HE RETRACTS HIMSELF. On whether the Grihya-sûtra and the Srauta-sûtra are one work by one author or the former is a later addition, he had published a position in the preface to his German edition — and here withdraws it: "the opinion which I once pronounced regarding the relation in which the two Sûtra texts stand to each other, cannot be vindicated, and ... it is better to leave that question unanswered until perhaps further discoveries throw a new light on it." He does not substitute a new answer. Legge, in the Yî King volume of this series, admits he did not understand the book the first time he translated it; this is the harder version of the same honesty, because it ends in a blank.
shares a method with The Yî King — Sacred Books of China Part II, SBE Vol. 16 (trans. James Legge, 1882)
What forced the retraction is worth following, because it is an argument about lost texts. The aphorisms he had once built on recur identically in other Grihya texts, so they are probably drawn from a lost original common to all of them — "and we have no means to judge whether the other similar passages are not taken from it also." Once a shared lost source is admitted, a passage sitting in an unexpected part of the corpus stops being evidence of anything about that corpus's composition. The inference he had drawn was available only while the lost text was not suspected.
He also gets a jab in at a habit of his profession, in the middle of praising a bad manuscript. The Sâmbavya-Grihya MS "is very confused, and full of blunders of all sorts, yet it deserves to be attentively studied by all scholars who are accustomed to look, IF NOT IN THEORY YET IN PRACTICE, on the agreement of a few Vedic" manuscripts as decisive. The qualification is the whole point: nobody holds that theory, and plenty of people work as though they did.