blame Whitney for making. Special difficulties of this sort should have been settled for him by the sūtra-specialists, just as he had settled the special difficulties of the Prātiçākhya when he edited that text.
Value of the ritual Sūtras for the exegesis of the Saṁhitā.—Estimates of the value of these Sūtras 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 Kāuçika which really elucidates the Saṁhitā, and that the Kāuçika 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 kaṇḍikā 79 of the Kāuçika, a young Hindu, still in the heyday of the blood, would, at such an approach of a climax of feeling as is implied in the acts from the talpārohaṇa to the actual nidhuvana (79. 9) inclusive, tolerate—whether patiently or impatiently—such an accompaniment of mantras as is prescribed in sūtras 4 to 9. Whatever philological pertinence may be made out for them (cf. 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 Sūtra often represents an ideal prescription or ideale Vorschrift,[1] 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 Kāuçika no sufficient warrant for dogmatism in the exegesis of the Saṁhitā.—There is every reason to suppose that the actual text of the saṁhitās 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. lxxv). In these days of rapid travel and communication, it is hard to realize the isolation of the Indian villages (grāmas) and country districts (janapadas) in antiquity. That isolation tended to
- ↑ I owe this suggestion to Professor Delbrück 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 Brüdergemeine of Count Zinzendorf:
Mein mir von Gott verliehenes Weib!
Anitzt besteig' ich deinen Leib.
Empfange meinen Samen
In Gottes Namen. Amen.
