Page:A history of Sanskrit literature (1900), Macdonell, Arthur Anthony.djvu/256

 CHAPTER IX

THE SŪTRAS

(Circa 500-200 B.C.)

the Upanishads were a development of the speculative side of the Brāhmaṇas and constituted the textbooks of Vedic dogma, so the Çrauta Sūtras form the continuation of their ritual side, though they are not, like the Upanishads, regarded as a part of revelation. A sacred character was never attributed to them, probably because they were felt to be treatises compiled, with the help of oral priestly tradition, from the contents of the Brāhmaṇas solely to meet practical needs. The oldest of them seem to go back to about the time when Buddhism came into being. Indeed it is quite possible that the rise of the rival religion gave the first impetus to the composition of systematic manuals of Brahmanic worship. The Buddhists in their turn must have come to regard Sūtras as the type of treatise best adapted for the expression of religious doctrine, for the earliest Pāli texts are works of this character. The term Kalpa Sūtra is used to designate the whole body of Sūtras concerned with religion which belonged to a particular Vedic school. Where such a complete collection has been preserved, the Çrauta Sūtra forms its first and most extensive portion.

To the Rigveda belong the Çrauta manuals of two