A History of Sanskrit Literature c11.82

c11.82

To the *White Yajurveda* is attached the longest, and, beside the *Chhāndogya*, the most important of the Upanishads. It bears even clearer traces than that work of being a conglomerate of what must originally have been separate treatises. It is divided into three parts, each containing two chapters. The last part is designated, even in the tradition of the commentaries, as a supplement (*Khila-kāṇḍa*), a statement fully borne out by the contents. That the first and second parts were also originally independent of each other is sufficiently proved by both containing the legend of Yājnavalkya and his two wives in almost identical words throughout. To each of these parts (as well as to Book x. of the *Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa*) a successive list (*vaṁça*) of teachers is attached. A comparison of these lists seems to justify the conclusion that the first part (called *Madhukāṇḍa*) and the second (*Yājnavalkya-kāṇḍa*) existed during nine generations as independent Upanishads within the school of the *White Yajurveda*, and were then combined by a teacher named Āgniveçya; the third part, which consists of all kinds of supplementary matter, being subsequently added. These lists further make the conclusion probable that the leading teachers of the ritual tradition (Brāhmaṇas) were different from those of the philosophical tradition (Upanishads).