...Let us beget offspring. Let us acquire many sons, and may they reach old age.
Loving, bright, with genial minds may we see a hundred autumns, may we live a hundred autumns, may we hear a hundred autumns! --p. 282.
This is part one of two of the Sacred Books of the East
translation of the Grihya Sutras.
The Grihya Sutras are a collection of late Vedic-era (ca. 500 BCE)
household rituals and regulations,
many reflecting much more ancient traditions.
It is like reading a time-travelling ethnographer's field notes in Vedic India.
Included are fertility and marriage ceremonies, ritual purity laws,
plus material on initiations, funerals and other rites of passage.
This volume also includes a complete Sanskrit transliteration of the
text of the Khadira-Grihya-Sutra, rare for the SBE series.