A History of Indian Literature v1.c8.s6.14

v1.c8.s6.14

¹ It is usually assumed that the name "White" Yajurveda means "clear, well-arranged" Yajurveda, and that it indicates the clear distinction between sacrificial utterances and explanations of ritual in the same, while "black" Yajurveda means "unarranged" Yajurveda. This explanation, emanating from Indian commentators, seems very improbable to me. But already in Śatap. Br. XIV, 9, 4, 33 (*cf.* IV, 4, 5, 19) the "white sacrificial utterances" (śuklāni yajūṁṣi) are called *ādityāni*, "revealed by the sun"; and the Purāṇas, too, relate that Yājñavalkya received new sacrificial utterances from the *sun* (Viṣṇu-Purāṇa, III, 5). I believe that the "*white* Yajurveda" owes its name to this connection with the sun. In contrast to this the older Yajurveda was then called the "black" one. It is most improbable "that the Saṁhitā of the white Yajurveda is most closely related to the original form of the Veda of the Adhvaryu," as Pischel thinks, KG, 172. *Cf.* Keith, HOS, Vol. 18, pp. lxxxv ff., on the mutual relationship of the Saṁhitās of the Yajurveda.