The History of Indian Literature c8.288

c8.288

With regard, in the first place, to the name itself, it probably refers, as has been already remarked, to the fact that the sacrificial formulas are here separated from their ritual basis and dogmatical explanation, and that we have here a systematic and orderly distribution of the matter so confusedly mixed up in the Black Yajus. This is the way in which the expression *śukláni yajúṅshi* is explained by the commentator Dviveda Gaṅga, in the only passage where up till now it has been found in this sense, namely, in the last supplement added to the Vṛihad-Áraṇyaka of the White Yajus. I say in the only passage, for though it appears once under the form *śukrayajúṅshi*, in the Áraṇyaka of the Black Yajus (5. 10), it has hardly the same general meaning there, but probably refers, on the contrary, to the fourth and fifth books of that Áraṇyaka itself. For in the Anukramaṇí of the Átreya school these books bear the name *śukriyakáṇḍa*, because referring to expiatory ceremonies; and this name *śukriya*, ‘expiating’ [probably rather ‘illuminating’?] belongs also to the corresponding parts of the Saṃhitá of the White Yajus, and even to the *sámans* employed at these particular sacrifices.