History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v1.c6.s21.2

v1.c6.s21.2

The name of Yājñavalkya is one of the most illustrious among Vedic sages. He is credited with having promulgated the White Yajurveda. In the Śāntiparva (chap. 312) we are told that there was a rupture between Vaiśampāyana and his pupil Yājñavalkya and that by worshipping the Sun the latter received the revelation of the White Yajurveda, the Śatapatha &c. The accounts in the Viṣṇu (3. 5), the Bhāgavata (XII. 6. 61-74) and other purāṇas differ somewhat from the one in the Mahābhārata, but all agree on the fact of the strained relations between Yājñavalkya and his teacher. The Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa in several places alludes to the dialogues of Yājñavalkya and king Janaka of Videha on agnihotra (S. B. E. vol. 44 p. 46). Vide Śatapatha (ed. by Weber) XI. 6. 2. At the end of the Śatapatha we are told that Vājasaneya Yājñavalkya promulgated the bright Yajus formulæ from the Sun.³⁰⁶ In the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad Yājñavalkya appears as a great philosopher teaching the recondite doctrines of Brahma and immortality to one of his two wives, the philosophically minded Maitreyī (II. 4 and IV. 5). In the same Upaniṣad Yājñavalkya is represented as carrying away the one thousand cows set apart by Janaka for the most learned Brāhmaṇa (III. 1. 1-2) and Yājñavalkya is said to have imparted to Janaka the knowledge of the destiny of the soul after it is released from the bonds of flesh and worldly affections. Kātyāyana in his Vārtika on Pāṇini (IV. 3. 105)³⁰⁷ speaks of the Brāhmaṇas of Yājñavalkya and very heated controversies have raged round the correct interpretation of the Vārtika and the Mahābhāṣya thereon (*vide* Max Müller's Ancient Sanskrit Literature p. 360, Goldstücker's Pāṇini, p. 132 ff and S. B. E. vol. 12 pp. xxxv-xxxviii). It is to be noted that in the Yājñavalkyasmṛti itself³⁰⁸ (III. 110) the author, whoever he may be, claims the authorship of the Āraṇyaka that he received from the Sun and the Yogaśāstra composed by him. This is simply put in to glorify the Yājñavalkya-smṛti as the work of a great and ancient sage, philosopher and yogin. From the style and the doctrines of the smṛti it is impossible to believe that it was the work of the same hand that gave to the world the Upaniṣad containing the boldest philosophical speculation couched in the simplest yet the most effective language. Even orthodox Indian opinion was not prepared to admit the unity of authorship in the case of the smṛti and the Āraṇyaka. The Mitākṣarā says at the beginning that a certain pupil of Yāj. abridged the dharmaśāstra in the form of a dialogue.³⁰⁹ It will be shown later on that, though the sage who promulgated the Āraṇyaka and the author of the smṛti cannot be identical, yet the Yājñavalkya-smṛti is much more closely connected with the White Yajurveda and the literature particularly belonging to it than with any other Veda.