Gonda 1980 introduces a new organization of the material and integrates the contributions of the Atharva Veda more explicitly. Gopal 1983 covers the same ground, assuming somewhat uncritically that the rulebooks may be treated as historical records. Kane 1941 and Kane 1953 together consider the subject within the broader framework of Dharmaśāstra, the norms of religious and legal practice. Hillebrandt 1897 is an introduction to the Vedic ritual literature as a whole, but more than half of the work concerns Gṛhya topics (including funerary cults). Inevitably, then, much of the scholarship mentioned in this article is rather old, though in many respects it is not out dated. The topic of Vedic domestic ritual has never received as much attention as the Śrauta “high cult” of the Vedic tradition. Indeed much of the interest of the Gṛhya texts lies in the detailed (if idealized) picture they present of household customs, everyday concerns, gender roles, familial and social relations, and prevailing beliefs about the divine and supernatural forces that affect human welfare.
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These first promulgations of these domestic ritual codes mark the moment when the Vedic priesthood began to extend its professional functions into a wider range of society and into more areas of everyday life. But we find the first formal, systematic treatment of them in the Gṛhya sutras, a genre of ritual codes modeled on the more extensive Śrauta sutras. Such rites are alluded to in passing in the Rig Veda, an anthology of the oldest compositions in Sanskrit and the basis for Śrauta liturgy, and are described more extensively in the Atharva Veda. These “domestic” (Gṛhya) Vedic rites comprised fire offerings ( homa), fireless offerings ( bali), rites of the life-cycle ( saṃskāra), and a wide variety of rites believed to confer blessing, protection, healing, power over others, and other practical purposes. Parallel to and ultimately presupposed by the Śrauta ritual system were the simpler, less theorized rites performed in the household ( gṛha), mainly by the paterfamilias himself. The earliest Vedic ritual texts ordain a complex priestly “high cult” involving multiple fires and priests, later called Śrauta ritual (referring to śruti, “what is heard,” regarding the mantras and ritual injunctions of the Veda). The Vedic religion primarily involved veneration of a wide range of divinities by means of formulaic prayers (mantras) and food offerings.