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 812

xxviii
The Brahmana of the Vagasaneyins bears the name of Satapatha, that is, the Brahmana 'of a hundred paths,' because it consists of a hundred lectures (adhyayas). Both the Vagasaneyi-samhitâ and the Satapatha-brâhmana have come down to us in two different recensions, those of the Madhyandina and the Kanva schools. Of the latter recension of the Brahmana, however, three books out of seventeen are wanting in the European libraries and have, as far as I know, not yet been discovered in India. The Mâdhyandina text both of the Samhitâ and the Brahmana has been edited by Professor Weber; the former with the various readings of the Kanva recension. To the same scholar we owe a German translation of the first adhyâya of the first kânda1; and he has, moreover, subjected the entire accessible literature of the White Yagur-veda-with the exception of the Kanva text of the Brahmana-to a careful examination, and has extracted from it all that seems calculated to throw light on its history, so that in this respect little remains to those who come after him but to state the results of his enquiries. Professor Max Müller, in his History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, has also fully discussed the questions regarding the date and authorship of these texts, and has done much to clear up what was obscure in their relations to the older Yagus texts and to Vedic literature generally. Many points, however, still remain doubtful; and, above all, opinions are as divided as ever regarding the approximate date of the teacher with whose name tradition connects the origin of the modern school of the Adhvaryus.
The schools of the Vagasaneyins are stated to have been either fifteen or seventeen; and their names are given, though with considerable variations, in different works. No distinct traces, however, have as yet been discovered of any recensions besides the two already referred to. As regards the names of these two,-the Mâdhyandina and Kânva,— the latter is the name of one of the chief families of Rishis
SATAPATHA-BRAHMANA.
(hence Black Yagus), and was picked up by Yâgñavalkya's condisciples, who had assumed the form of partridges. This story seems first to occur in the Purânas; see Wilson's translation of the Vishnu Purâna (ed. Hall), III, p. 54. Pânini (IV, 3, 102) and Patangali only know of the Taittirîya texts as 'promulgated by Tittiri.' Zeitsch. der D. M. G., IV, p. 289 seq.; reprinted in Indische Streifen I, p. 31 seq.
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