The Grihya-sutras, rules of Vedic domestic ceremonies

xvlii
G/27HYA-S^TRAS.
hidden, so that its existence can only be demonstrated by-
reasoning 1.
But the Brahma;/a texts furnish us still in another way
the most decisive arguments to prove that there have been
no expositions of the Grihya. ritual in Brahmawa form :
they contain exceptionally and scattered through their
mass sections, in which they treat of subjects which ac-
cording; to later custom would have been treated in the
GrzTiya-sutras. Precisely this sporadic appearance of
Grthya. chapters in the midst of expositions of a totally
different contents leads us to draw the conclusion that
literary compositions did not then exist, in which these
chapters would have occupied their proper place as
integral parts of a whole. Discussions of questions of
Grihya. ritual are found in the Brahma;/a literature, natur-
ally enough in those appendices of various kinds which
generally follow the exposition of the principal subject of
the 6"rauta ritual. Accordingly we find in the eleventh
book of the vSatapatha Brahma;^a ^, among the manifold
additions to subjects previously treated, which make up
the principal contents of this book ^, an exposition of the
Upanayana, i. e. the solemn reception of the pupil by the
teacher, who is to teach him the Veda. The way in which
the chapter on the Upanayana is joined to the preceding
one, is eminently characteristic ; it shows that it is the
merest accident which has brought about in that place the
discussion of a subject connected with the Gr^Tiya ritual,
and that a ceremony such as the Upanayana is properly not
in its proper place in the midst of the literature of Brahmawa
texts. A dialogue (brahmodya) between Uddalaka and
Saukeya precedes ;
the two talk of the Agnihotra and of
various expiations (prayaj-^-itta) connected with that sacri-
fice. At the end Saukeya, filled with astonishment at the
wisdom of Uddalaka, declares that he wishes to come to
him as a pupil (upay^ni bhagavantam), and Uddalaka
' Max Miiller, History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, pp. 94-96.
2
^-atapatha Brahma;/a XI, 5, 4.
3
Max Miiller, History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 359.