The History of Indian Literature c8.300.5

c8.300.5

But this only happens in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth *adhyáyas*, though here with tolerable frequency, evidently because these *adhyáyas* themselves bear more or less the character of a Bráhmaṇa.—With regard, lastly, to the data contained in the last *adhyáyas*, and testifying to their posteriority, these are to be sought more especially in the thirtieth and thirty-ninth *adhyáyas*, as compared with the sixteenth. It is, of course, only the Yajus portions proper which can here be adduced, and not the verses borrowed from the Ṛik-Saṃhitá, which naturally prove nothing in this connection. At most they can only yield a sort of measure for the time of their incorporation into the Yajus, in so far as they may be taken from the latest portions of the Ṛik, in which case the existence of these at that period would necessarily be presupposed. The data referred to consist in two facts. First, whereas in the sixteenth book Rudra, as the god of the blazing fire, is endowed with a large number of the epithets subsequently applied to Śiva, two very significant epithets are here wanting which are applied to him in the thirty-ninth book, viz., *íśána* and *mahádeva*, names probably indicating some kind of sectarian worship (see above, p. 45). Secondly, the number of the mixed castes given in the thirtieth is much higher than that given in the sixteenth book.