Ancient Indian Historical Tradition c31.132

c31.132

What Vyāsa did seems to have been this. The statement that he arranged and divided the four-pāda Veda into four suggests (1) that, though ṛc, sāman, and probably yajus and Atharvan⁴ were distinguished before, as shown above, yet they had not been treated distinctly, all co-existed as four pādas in one general Veda, and he definitely separated them and constituted them respectively as four distinct Vedas: or (2) that, at any rate, he expressly and formally fixed the fourfold division and completed the canon of each Veda in definite shape, which became final subject to small modifications afterwards.⁵ He had four disciples and entrusted to each of them one Veda, viz. the Rigveda to Paila, the Yajurveda to Vaiśampāyana, the Sāmaveda to Jaimini and the Atharvaveda to Sumantu.⁶ The priestly literature has suppressed all this just as it has ignored Vyāsa (p. 9), for something of this sort must have taken place on any theory of the compilation of the four Vedas.