Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 29.djvu/165

 INTRODUCTION TO THE A5VALAYANA-Gi^/HYA-S0TRA. Most of the questions referring to the Gr/hya-s{itra of AjvalAyana will be treated of more conveniently in con- nection with the different subjects which we shall have to discuss in our General Introduction to the GrAya-sOtras. Here I wish only to call attention to a well-known passage of Sha^/gurui-ishya, in which that commentator gives some statements on the works composed by ArvaUyana and by his teacher 5aunaka. As an important point in that passage has, as far as I can see, been misunderstood by several eminent scholars, I may perhaps be allowed here to try and correct that misunderstanding, though the point stands in a less direct connection with the GrzTiya-sQtra than with another side of the literary activity of Arval^yana. Sha^/gurujishya^, before speaking of A^valiyana, makes the following statements with regard to AjvaUyana's teacher, 5aunaka. * There was,' he says, *the SAkala, SamhitSi (of the Rig-veda), and the B^shkala SawhitcL ; following these two Sawhit^s and the twenty-one BrSh- mawas, adopting principally the Aitareyaka and supple- menting it by the other texts, he who was revered by the whole number of great 7?/shis composed the first Kalpa-sQtra.' He then goes on to speak of Ajval^yana — knew everything he had learnt from that teacher, com- posed a SQtra and announced (to 5aunaka that he had done so)V 5aunaka then destroyed his own Siitra, and ' See Max Miiller's History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, pp. 230 seqq. ; Indische Studien, I, 102. Digitized by Google
 * 5aunaka's pupil was the venerable Asval^yana,, He who
 * Thb seems to me to be the meaning of sdtra/w kr/tv4 nyavedayat;