The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c9.5

v1.c9.5

The Yajurveda represents the literary fixing of the formulae used by the Adhvaryu and his assistants in their performance of the great sacrifices: clearly the actual use of such formulae must have been normal from the beginning of the sacrifice, but it was only after the collection of the Rigveda hymns that the idea of creating a similar Saṁhitā for the Adhvaryu became popular. This is shown unmistakably by the frequent application for the purposes of the Adhvaryu of verses from the Rigveda, in many cases without any real propriety and often with alterations deliberately planned to adapt them to their new use. Whereas the Rigveda has come down to us in but one collection, the Yajurveda¹ is preserved in two main recensions, which at comparatively early date received in India the names of the Black and the White Yajurveda. The origin of these appellations is uncertain, but later they were interpreted in such manner as to suggest that the White Yajurveda owed its name to the fact that in it the formulae of the Adhvaryu were collected separately from the explanatory remarks which accompany them in the texts of the Black Yajurveda. In making this distinction the compilers of the White Yajurveda, which has come down to us in the Saṁhitā called the Vājasaneyi, were merely restoring the primitive condition of the Yajurveda, which must at one time have consisted of a collection of the formulae, in prose and verse, only.² But already at a comparatively early period the formulae were accompanied by explanations, called Brāhmaṇas, texts pertaining to the Brahman or sacred lore, in which the different acts of the ritual were given symbolical interpretations, the words of the texts commented on, and stories told to illustrate the sacrificial performance. Hence in the Black Yajurveda we find three complete recensions, the Taittirīya, Kāṭhaka, and Maitrāyaṇī,³ and one imperfect, the Kapiṣṭhala, in which formulae and Brāhmaṇa are closely allied, while in the case of the White Yajurveda the Brāhmaṇas are all collected in one great work, the most important of its type in Vedic literature, the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa. Perhaps as a result of this separation, a mass of old material, partly formulae, partly Brāhmaṇa, which had not been incorporated in the Taittirīya Saṁhitā was collected together in the Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa, which in part contains matter more recent than the Saṁhitā, but in part has matter as old as, at any rate, the later portions of that text.