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The Grihya Sutras, Part 1 (SBE29), by Hermann Oldenberg, [1886], at sacred-texts.com


KHANDA 3.

1. Now (follows) the Sapindîkarana (i.e. reception of a dead person into the community of Pinda-offerings with the other Manes).

p. 110

2. When one year has elapsed, or three half-months,

3. Or on a day when something good happens,

4. He fills four water-pots with sesamum, scents, and water,

5. Three for the fathers, one for the (newly) dead person,

6. And pours the pot that belongs to the (newly) dead person out into the pots of the fathers with the two verses, 'They who commonly' (Vâgasaneyi Samhitâ XIX, 45. 46).

7. Thus also the lump (of flour).

8. This is the Sapindîkarana.


Footnotes

109:1 3, 1. It appears to me that this whole chapter is a later addition to the original text. The last Sûtra of the preceding chapter, treating of the omission of the fourth 'father,' which forms, as shown in the preceding note, a consequence of the Sapindîkarana, p. 110 supposes this ceremony to be known and to require no special explanation. Had the intention of the author been to treat of the Sapindîkarana, this would have been the right place for mentioning the katurthavisarga, and not, as we really read it, the end of the chapter treating of the Ekoddishta. As pointing in the same direction I will mention that the Sâmbavya-Grihya, while giving the first, second, and fourth chapter of this Adhyâya, omits the third. Finally it seems decisive to me that the fifth (Parisishta) book of the Sâṅkhâyana-Grihya treats of the Sapindîkarana in a whole chapter (V, 9), which shows that the text itself, as the author of the Parisishta read it, gave no exposition of this ceremony.

110:2 Nârâyana says that tripaksha means either three pakshas, i.e. one month and a half, or one paksha deficient by three days, i.e. twelve days. We need not say that the latter explanation is inadmissible it evidently rests on a wrong conclusion drawn from a passage of another Sûtra quoted by him, in which it is stated that the Sapindîkarana should be performed samvatsarânte dvâdasâhe vâ.


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