Rishi Apastamba

Apastamba is the author of one of the most complete Sutra collections of the Krishna Yajurveda (Taittiriya) tradition: the Apastamba Shrauta, Grihya and Dharma Sutras. Together they make a Kalpa Sutra of thirty prashnas. The Karanavyuha, a list of Vedic schools quoted by Georg Buhler, puts the Apastamba school among the five branches of the Khandikiya school, itself a branch of the Taittiriyas. Max Muller called it a school of sutra authors: its founder did not claim a new Samhita or Brahmana, only a new systematic arrangement of the rules.

Tradition, as Robert Lingat reports it, makes Apastamba the pupil of Baudhayana and the teacher of Hiranyakeshin, each founding a school. Buhler found this plausible. The two Dharmasutras share several sutras word for word, and in places Apastamba argues against rules that Baudhayana allows. Buhler thought the distance between them was measured in centuries. Patrick Olivelle, working from the text, ranks the Apastamba Dharmasutra as the oldest of the surviving Dharmasutras, so the order of the two is a matter of scholarly dispute.

1. The Apastamba Kalpa Sutra: a full set of rules for Vedic sacrifices, household rites and dharma, in thirty prashnas: 1 to 24 Shrauta, 25 the Mantrapatha, 26 and 27 Grihya, 28 and 29 Dharma, 30 Shulba
2. The Apastamba Dharmasutra: one of the oldest Dharmasutras, in two books, on the duties of students (prashna 28) and householders (prashna 29), including marriage, inheritance, food, penance and the duties of a king
3. Custom as a source of dharma: Apastamba holds that the Vedas once contained all of dharma but parts are lost, so the agreed practice of good people is the guide where the text is missing (Olivelle's reading, called the lost Veda theory)
4. Dharma learned from women and all classes: in Dharmasutra 2.29.11 to 15 he says that parts of dharma not taught in the texts can be learned from women and from people of all classes, and he recognises a woman's right to property
5. The teachers he quotes: his Dharmasutra names earlier authorities, among them Kanva, Kunika, Kutsa, Kautsa, Pushkarasadi, Varshyayani, Svetaketu and Harita, which shows that dharma teaching had been written down before him

Kane dated the Dharmasutra to about 600 to 300 BCE and later narrowed it to 450 to 350 BCE. Olivelle accepts that the extant text is very early, while noting that the first version may have been composed after other Dharma texts. The place is also disputed. Buhler argued from the southern customs in the text that the school came from the south, in Andhra between the Godavari and the Krishna, and Lingat adds that Pallava inscriptions show the Apastamba tradition living in the south. Olivelle says that the text itself does not prove it, and that the school may have started in the north. Nothing is known of the man himself.

The Apastamba Sutra is followed mainly by Brahmin families of the Taittiriya school in South India, among Telugu, Tamil and Kannada speakers, and in Maharashtra. One Karnataka community, the Babburkamme Brahmins, is reported to follow it. Families name their sutra in the sankalpa ("Apastamba sutra") at the start of their rites. Followers of the Apastamba and Baudhayana sutras are reported across South India; no source checked gives numbers.

• A South Indian teaching hermitage, in the Godavari or Krishna country
• A student's lodging in the teacher's house, as the Dharmasutra begins
• A householder's home where the Grihya rites are kept