Dhammapada

SR No.: 007674
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Max Muller
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1881
Total Pages: 2540
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 45 MB

Page 810

xxvi
SATAPATHA-BRAHMANA.
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 Yagur-veda are recorded; but hitherto the recensions of only three of them have come to light,-viz. the Kathaka, the Maitrayanî-samhita, and the Taittirîya-samhita. The two former texts belong to subdivisions of the Kathas and Maitrayanîyas, two branches of the old school of the Karakas or Karakâdhvaryus. The Taittirîyas, on the other hand, seem to have been an independent branch of the old Yagus, 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 3, the Åpastambins.
The chief characteristic of the old Yagus texts consists, as has already been indicated, in the constant inter
Except, perhaps, the Sâma-veda, which, in the Karanavyûba, 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 Karanavyûha. The term Karaka, however, is also (e. g. in the Pratigña-sâtra) applied to the schools of the Black Yagus generally. If the Berlin MS. of the Kathaka professes, in the colophon, to contain the Karaka text of the work (which Professor Weber takes to refer to the Kârâyaniyâh), the Karaka-sâkhå of the Kathaka has perhaps to be understood in contradistinction to those portions of the Kathaka which have been adopted by the Taittirîyas and incorporated into their Brahmana.
: The Taittiriyas divide themselves into two schools, the Aukhiyas and the Khândikîyas; the Âpastambins are a subdivision of the latter branch. We have also the list of the contents (anakramani) of the Atreyas, a subdivision of the Aukhiyas.
understood the Taittiriyas and is into two scho
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