Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c11.s1.33

c11.s1.33

This fact cannot be thrown into relief by itself alone, without setting it in its true light by means of other facts drawn from that same Brâhmana. The “Çatapatha Br.” shows itself in the clearest way, that Brahmanic culture among the Videhas is only an offshoot from the Kurupañcâlas. Yâjnavalkya himself is a pupil of Âruni (note p. 396), who, as we saw, was a Pañcâla. The groups of Brahmans, who flock to Janaka, are—except Yâjnavalkya—Kurupañcâlânâm brâhmanâh (xiv, 6, 1, 1, etc.); the king of the east, who has a leaning to the culture of the west, collects the celebrities of the west at his court—much as the intellects of Athens gathered at the court of Macedonian princes. How fully throughout the whole text, which actually appears to have been compiled in the east, the authority of the west, of the Kurupañcâlas, is felt and acknowledged, the passages collected above amply show.† And most clearly in the well-known narration of the “Çatapatha Br.” i, 4, 1, 10 seq.‡ has the memory been preserved, that there was a time, when the sacrificial system, as it flourished on the Sarasvatî, was still a stranger to the land of the Videhas§ : Videgha Mâthava, the national hero of the Videhas, goes eastward across the Sadânîrâ and there establishes the rule of the Videhas. But Agni Vaiçvânara, who comes from the Sarasvatî, does not accompany him across; he cannot burn beyond the Sadânîrâ. Therefore in earlier ages no Brahmans went across the Sadânîrâ to the east, for it was bad land, whereof Agni Vaiçvânara had not tasted. "Now, however, eastward of that dwell many Brahmans; . . . now is it indeed good land, for now have Brahmans made it enjoyable through offerings." The difference between the ancient Vedic land of culture in the west and the east, where there was Aryan land, but not yet for a long time a home of Vaiçvânara, can scarcely be more significantly expressed. Certainly the limits between the two tracts here appear to have been already pushed forward a stage farther toward the east; the Kosalas have entered earlier than the Videhas into the community of Vedo-Brahmanic culture.*