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xxxviii
SATAPATHA-BRÂHMANA.
Katyâyana, regarding the age of Panini, such as would seem altogether unaccountable. The weakness of Goldstücker's argument lies in his identification of the Yagñavalkâni Brahmanâni with the Brâhmana of the Vågasaneyins. With Professor Weber I believe that Panini was perfectly well acquainted with the term Vågasaneyinah,' but saw no occasion for specially mentioning it in his rules. Surely, if his silence could possibly have been construed into an act of negligence, Katyayana, who was so intimately connected with the White Yagus that, on Goldstücker's own showing, he composed the Vagasaneyi-prátisakhya before he wrote his vårttikas, would have been the first to notice it. The Yagñavalkâni Brahmanåni, in their relation to the sacred canon of the school, seem to me to stand somewhat on a par with the Tittirinâ proktåh slokah1,'which, in Patañgali's time, were excluded from the term 'Taittiriyâh' as uncanonical, and which Professor Weber would identify, perhaps rightly, with some portions of the Taittirîyaranyaka. Both kinds of tracts probably belong to the last floating materials of Advaryu tradition, which had not yet been incorporated with the canon. Whether or not the Yagnavalkani Brahmanani form part of the text of the Satapatha which has come down to us, and what exact portions of that text we have to understand by this designation, must remain uncertain for the present. Most probably, however, we have to look for them to certain portions of the last book (or books) in which Yagñavalkya figures so prominently. If we had a complete copy of the Kânva recension, we might perhaps be in a better position for forming an opinion on this subject ; for if that version should really turn out to consist of 104 adhyâyas, four of these adhyâyas may have to be considered as a later interpolation; and the fact might have become obscured in the Mâdhyandina recension by a different division of the text? But, however this may
1 Mahâbhâshya on Pån. IV, 2, 66; 3, 104.
Possibly, however, this redundancy may have been caused by the insertion of the third or uddhâri-kânda, consisting of 124 kandikâs, to which there seems to be nothing corresponding in the Mâdhyandina text. We have no MS. of this particular kânda. I may also mention that, while in the first kânda (or second Kânva). the Madhyandinas count 9, and the Kânvas 8 adhyâyas,-in the fourth kânda (or
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