Ancient Indian Historical Tradition c31.103

c31.103

These statements say Rigvedic hymns had been made into a collection by Kaṇḍarīka. His epithets dvi-veda, chandoga and adhvaryu mean (I take it) that he was specially proficient in the sāman and yajus departments. Bābhravya, working apparently on that collection, applied himself specially to the Rigveda as his epithet bahvṛca suggests, and composed the Śikṣā and devised the Kramapāṭha. Tradition thus declares that the first substantial compilation and study of the hymns of the Veda in its triple departments of ṛc, yajus and sāman were made in S. Pañcāla by these two brahman ministers of Brahmadatta,⁵ whose position may be estimated as about a century and a half before the Bhārata battle (pp. 148, 164-5). But Kaṇḍarīka’s compilation was not the Veda as we have it now, first, because certain hymns, such as Devāpi’s for instance (x, 98: p. 165), could not have been included since they were later; and secondly, because tradition is unanimous that Vyāsa ‘arranged’ the Veda, which means a real arrangement of the Veda as it was finally settled.