(brahman) generally ; or because they were, for the most part, the authoritative utterances of such as were thoroughly versed in Vedic and sacrificial lore and competent to act as Brahmans or superintending priests \ In later times a collection or digest of such detached pieces came to be likewise called a Brahmawa. Works of this kind have come down to us in connection with all the Vedic Sawhitas, generally in more than one version which, though on the whole betraying a common stock of material, often vary considerably, both in their arrangement and their treat- ment of these materials. Nay, owing as they do their origin to different schools of the same Veda, these re- censions not unfrequently take the very opposite view of single points of ceremonial. Originally the number of such recensions, more or less differing from each other, must have been much larger; but the practical tendencies of a later age, which led to the production of concise manuals of ceremonial rules— the Kalpa-sutras — adapted to the sacrificial practices of more than one school, were not favourable to the perpetuation of these bulky cyclopaedias of theological school-wisdom : thus only the Brahma;ms of the schools which had the greatest number of followers survived; while others were probably never committed to writing, or at best had a precarious existence down to more recent times.
While the Brahma//as are thus our oldest sources from which a comprehensive view of the sacrificial ceremonial can be obtained, they also throw a great deal of light on the earliest metaphysical and linguistic speculations of the Hindus. Another, even more interesting feature of these works, consists in the numerous legends scattered through them. From the archaic style in which these mythological tales are generally composed, as well as from the fact that not a few of them are found in Brahmawas of different schools and Vedas, though often with considerable varia-
» See Max Muller, History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 172 ; Rig-veda- samhita IV, p. vi. Professors Weber (History of Sanskrit Literature p. .1). Whitney, Westergaard, and other scholars durve brahma.a from brahman, ' prayer, worship.'
XXIV i'ATAPATHA-BRAHMAiVA.
tions, it is pretty evident that the ground-work of many of them goes back to times preceding the composition of the Brihinawas. From a mythological, and to some extent from a linguistic, point of view these legends thus form a connecting link between the latter and the Vedic hymns. In the case of some of these legends — as those of Suna/i- jepha^ and the fetching of the Soma from heaven^ — we can even see how they have grown out of germs contained in the Vedic hymns ; their relation to the latter being thus not unlike that of the Sagas of the younger Edda to the songs of the older Edda. The Kaushitaki Brahma;/a ^ at the end of a story of this kind about Soma, remarks that it is thus told by those versed in legend (akhy^navida/^). We may perhaps infer from this passage that there was a class of people who took a special interest in such legends, and made it their business to collect and repeat them. Indeed, many of the elaborate mythical stories with which we meet in the later epical and Pura/ac literature doubtless owe their origin to simple popular legends of this kind *.
Besides the genuine myths which we find in the Brah- ma;/as, there is also a large number of stories which were evidently invented by the authors of these treatises for the purpose of supplying some kind of traditional support for particular points of ceremonial ^. However small the in- trinsic merit of such passages, they, too, are not entirely devoid of interest, especially from a linguistic point of view, since the style of narrative and the archaic mode of diction which they affect, readily lend themselves to syn- tactic turns of expression rarely indulged in by the authors in the purely explanatory and exegetic parts of their works. And, indeed, whatever opinion the general reader may form of the Brahmawas, as purely literary com-
^ See R. Roth in Weber's Ind. Stud. I, 475 seq. ; II, iii seq. ; Max Miiller, History of Ancient Sanslvrit Literature, p. 408 seq.
^ See the present volume, p. 183. Compare also Professor Aufrecht's remarks on the myth of Apala, Ind. Slud. IV, p. 8.
3 K. B. Ill, 25 ; cf. Weber, Ind. Stud, II, 313.
* Cf. Max Miiller, Upanishads, I, p. 39 note.
* See, for instance, Stii. Br. II, 4, 3, 1, where a legend of this kind seems to be directly ascribed to Ya^wavalkya.
Introduction. Xxv
positions— and, assuredly, it cannot be a very high one— to the Sanskrit student these works (together with their supplements, the Ara;^yakas ; and their metaphysical ap- pendages, the Upanishads) are of the highest importance as the only genuine prose works which the Sanskrit, as a popular language, has produced. For the com- parative study of syntax, which has been taken up with such signal success by Professor Delbruck and other scholars, the Brahmawas offer a rich field of enquiry. Nor is the style of these compositions— with its compact gram- matical forms and expressive particles, and its habitual employment of the oratio directa instead of dependent clauses— without a certain rough beauty of its own, which, however, almost entirely evaporates in a rendering into modern analytical speech. And notwithstanding the general emptiness of the speculations of the Indian theologians, 'there are,' as Professor Max Muller observes \ 'passages in the Brahmawas full of genuine thought and feeling, and most valuable as pictures of life, and as records of early struggles, which have left no trace in the literature of other nations.'
Although the Adhvaryus, who had to perform all the manual work connected with the sacrifice, were originally looked upon as a subordinate class of priests, their ofiice seems to have risen in the general estimation with the increasing importance that was attributed to the endless details of the ceremonial. In a passage of the Taittiriya Upanishad (2, 3), the Ya^us is said to be the head, the Ri\i the right side, the Saman the left side, the Ade^a the soul, and the Atharvahgiras (Atharva-veda) the tail. With better reason the Ya^ur-veda might be called the body of the sacrifice, since it contains almost the entire apparatus of sacrificial formulas, while the other ritualistic works are concerned, either chiefly or entirely, with the Soma-sacrifice. As a matter of fact, no other Veda has given rise to so large a number of schools as the \a^ur-
1 History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 408. tit /c ., < fi,<. nih
2 That is, the Brahmawa, according to 5ankara. In 5at. Br. I\ . 6. 7- «>• tie «<* and Saman are identified with Speech, and the Ya-ns with the Mind.
XXVI .JATAPATHA-BRAHMAiVA.
veda\ The numerous subdivisions of the Adhvaryus trace their origin to either of two principal schools, an older and a younger one, the latter of which is itself an offshoot of the former. The oral transmission of the large body of exegetic and legendary matter attached to the sacrificial formulas could hardly fail, in course of time, to produce considerable variations, in different localities, both as regards the wording and the arrangement of these works. Different schools would naturally arise, — each with its own approved recension of the traditional texts, — which in their turn would sooner or later become liable to the same process of disintegration. Such, indeed, has been the case, more or less, with all the Vedic texts, until mechanical means were devised to arrest this process of change. The names of many such subdivisions of the older Ya^ur-veda are recorded ; but hitherto the recensions of only three of them have come to light, — viz. the Ka/Z-aka, the Maitraya;/i-sa;;/hita, and the Taittiriya-sawhita. The two former texts belong to subdivisions of the Ka///as and Maitraya/^iyas, two branches of the old school of the TTarakas or /iTarakadhvaryus. The Taittiriyas, on the other hand, seem to have been an independent branch of the old Ya^us", the origin of which is ascribed to a teacher named Tittiri. Their text has come down to us in the recension of one of its subdivisions '^ the Apastambins.
The chief characteristic of the old Ya^us texts consists, as has already been indicated, in the constant inter-
' Except, perhaps, the Sama-veda, which, in the ^ara«avyuha, is said to have counted a thousand schools; though that work itself enumerates only seven schools, one of them with five subdivisions. The number of teachers mentioned in connection with this Veda is, however, very considerable.
^ As such, at least, the Taittiriyas are mentioned in the ^arawavyiiha. The term A'araka, however, is also (e. g. in the Prati^jla-siitra) applied to the schools of the Black Ya^us generally. If the Berlin MS. of the Ka/Aaka professes, in the colophon, to contain the A'araka text of the work (which Professor Weber takes to refer to the A'araya«iya/t), the A'araka-sakha of the Ka'Aaka has perhaps to be understood in contradistinction to those portions of the Ka/Aaka which have been adopted by the Taittiriyas and incorporated into their Brilhmawa.
" The Taittiriyas divide themselves into two schools, the Aukhiyas and the Kha'if/ikiyas ; the Apastambins are a subdivision of the latter branch. We have also the list of the contents (anakramawi) of the Atreyas, a subdivision of the Aukhiyas.
INTRODUCTION. XXvIl
mingling of the sacrificial formulas and the explanatory or Brahma;/a portions. It was with the view of remedying this want of arrangement, by entirely separating the exegetic matter from the formulas, that the new school of Adhvaryus was founded. The name given to this school is Va^asaneyins, its origin being ascribed to Ya^/7avalkya Va^asaneya. The result of this new redaction of the Ya^us texts was the formation of a Sa;;/hita, or collection of mantras^ and a Brahma;/a. This re-arrangement was doubtless undertaken in imitation of the texts of the Hotrt priests, who had a Brahmawa^ of their own, while their sacrificial prayers formed part of the Rtk-sa7/ihita.. Indeed, the Taittiriyas themselves became impressed with the desirability of having a Brahmawa of their own, — and attained their object by the simple, if rather awkward, expedient of applying that designation to an appendage to their Sa;//hita, which exhibits the same mixture of mantra and brahma/^a as the older work. They also incorporated a portion of the Ka///aka text into their Brahma/^a and its supplement, the Taittiriyara/zyaka. Of all the schools of the old Ya^us those of the Taittiriyas seem to have attracted by far the greatest number of adherents ; and in southern India their texts have continued pre-eminently the subject of study till the present day. In northern India^ on the other hand, they have been largely superseded by their later rivals. On account of the lucid arrangement of their sacred texts, the Va^asaneyins called them the White (j-ukla) Ya^ur-veda ; the term of Black or Dark (kr/shz/a) Ya^ur-veda being, for the opposite reason, applied to the texts of the older schools. In later times, an absurd story was invented (doubtless by followers of the White Ya^us), in which the origin of the name Taittiriya is connected with the u'ord tittiri -', in the sense of ' partridge.'
' It has come down to us in two different recensions, the Aitareya and the Kaushitaki (or 5'ankhayana) Brahmawa.
^ Professor Weber, however, thinks there may be some reason for this deri- vation ; the name of Taittiriya having perhaps been applied to this school on account of the motley (partridge-like) character of its texts. According to the story alluded to, Yao-/7avalkya, having been taught the old Y.n^'-us texts by Vai- sampayana, incurred the displeasure of his teacher, and was forced by him to disgorge the sacred science which, on falling to the ground, became soiled
XXVIU S-ATAPATHA-BRAHMAiVA.