The History of Indian Literature c8.229

c8.229

First, of the *Black Yajus.* The data thus far known to us concerning it open up such extensive literary perspectives, but withal in such a meagre way, that investigation has, up to the present time, been less able to attain to approximately satisfactory results\* than in any other field. In the first place, the name "Black Yajus" belongs only to a later period, and probably arose in contradistinction to that of the White Yajus. While the theologians of the Ṛik are called Bahvṛichas, and those of the Sáman Chhandogas, the old name for the theologians of the Yajus is Adhvaryus; and, indeed, these three names are already so employed in the Saṃhitá of the Black Yajus and the Bráhmaṇa of the White Yajus. In the latter work the designation Adhvaryus is applied to its own adherents, and the Charakádhvaryus are denoted and censured as their adversaries—an enmity which is also apparent in a passage of the Saṃhitá of the White Yajus, where the Charakáchárya, as one of the persons to be dedicated at the Purushamedha, is devoted to Dushkṛita, or "Ill deed." This is all the more strange, as the term *charaka* is otherwise always used in a good sense, for "travelling scholar;" as is also the root *char*, "to wander about for instruction." The explanation probably consists simply in the fact that the name Charakas is also, on the other hand, applied to one of the principal schools of the Black Yajus, whence we have to assume that there was a direct enmity between these and the adherents of the White Yajus who arose in opposition to them—a hostility similarly manifested in other cases of the kind. A second name for the Black Yajus is "Taittiríya," of which no earlier appearance can be traced than that in its own Prátiśákhya-Sútra, and in the Sáma-Sútras. Páṇini¹ connects this name with a Ṛishi called Tittiri, and so does the Anukramaṇí to the Átreya school, which we shall have frequent occasion to mention in the sequel. Later legends, on the contrary, refer it to the transformation of the pupils of Vaiśampáyana into partridges (*tittiri*), in order to pick up the *yajus*-verses disgorged by one of their companions who was wroth with his teacher. However absurd this legend may be, a certain amount of sense yet lurks beneath its surface. The Black Yajus is, in fact, a motley, undigested jumble of different pieces; and I am myself more inclined to derive the name Taittiríya from the variegated partridge (*tittiri*) than from the Ṛishi Tittiri; just as another name of one of the principal schools of the Black Yajus, that of the Kháṇḍikíyas, probably owes its formation to this very fact of the Black Yajus being made up of *khaṇḍas*, fragments, although Páṇini,[^asterisk] as in the case of Taittiríya, traces it to a Ṛishi of the name of Khaṇḍika, and although we do really meet with a Khaṇḍika (Audbhári) in the Bráhmaṇa of the White Yajus (xi. 8. 4. 1).