Volume 1 - Sanskrit Web

8. Tlu Kaufika-Sulra and the Vaitana-Sutra Ixxvii
blame Whitney for making. Special difficulties of this sort should have
been settled for him by the sutra-specialists, just as he had settled the
special difficulties of the Pratigakhya when he edited that text.
Value of the ritual Sutras for the exegesis of the Samhita. — Estimates
of the value of these Sutras as casting light upon the original meaning
of the mantras have differed and will perhaps continue to differ. The
opinion has even been held by a most eminent scholar that there is, on
the whole, very little in the Kau^ika which really elucidates the Sariihita,
and that the Kau^ika is in the main a fabrication rather than a collection
of genuine popular practices. The principal question here is, not whether
this opinion is right or wrong, but rather, to what extent is it right or
wrong. It is, for example, hard to suppose that, upon the occasion contemplated
in kandika 79 of the Kau9ika, a young Hindu, still in the heyday
of the blood, would, at such an approach of a climax of feeling as
implied in the acts from the talpdro/iana to the actual nidhuvana (79. 9)
inclusive, tolerate — whether patiently or impatiently — such an accompaniment
of mantras as is prescribed in sutras 4 to 9. Whatever philological
pertinence may be made out for them (cf.
is
Whitney's note to xiv.
2. 64), their natural impertinence to the business in hand seems almost
intolerable.
To this it may be answered that the Sutra often represents an ideal
prescription or ideale
Vorschrift} compliance with which was not expected
by any one, save on certain ceremonial occasions, the extreme formality
of which was duly ensured by elaborate preparation and- the presence of
witnesses.
The data of the Kauqika no sufficient warrant for dogmatism in the
exegesis of the Samhita. — There is every reason to suppose that the
actual text of the samhitas is often a fragmentary and faulty record of
the antecedent (I will not say original) oral tradition ; and that the
stanzas as we find them have often been dislocated and their natural
sequence faulted by the action of the diaskeuasts. It is moreover
palpable that questions of original sequence, so far from being cleared up,
are often complicated all the more by the comparison of the sequences of
the ritual texts (see p. Ixxv). In these days of rapid travel and communication,
it is hard to realize the isolation of the Indian villages (gramas)
and country districts {janapadas) in antiquity. That isolation tended to
' I owe this suggestion to Professor Delbriick of Jena, who was my guest while I had this
chapter in hand and was so kind as to criticize it. As a curious parallel to the case above
cited, he told me of the verses prescribed for use in the Briidergemeine of Count Zinzendorf :
Mein mir von Gott verliehenes WeibI
•Anitzt besteig' ich deinen Leib.
Empfange meinen Samen
In Gottes Namen. Amen.