Satapatha Bramhana Part 03

SR No.: 007679
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Julius Eggeling
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1894
Total Pages: 2382
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 45 MB

Page 529

lxii
2, 2-5). The Paippalâdas, Saunakins, Galadas, and Maudas are alike representatives of Atharvan schools (see Kausika, Introduction, p. xxxiii ff.): the passage shows how eager the scramble for the office of purohita had become. That the Atharvans finally succeeded in making heard their clamorous demand for this office (see below, p. lxvii) is probably due, as we shall see, to their superior, if not exclusive knowledge of witchcraft, which was doubtless regarded in the long run as the most practical and trenchant instrument for the defence of king and people.
Causes
of the AV.
In order to estimate at its correct value the claims of the Atharvanists that their own Veda is entitled to the name Brahma-veda, and that the so-called leading up to Brahman-priests and the Purohitas must be the exaltation adherents of the AV., we need to premise certain considerations of a more general nature. In the Vedic religious system, or we might say more cautiously religious evolution, three literary forms and correspondingly three liturgical methods of application of these forms to the sacrifice were evolved at a time prior to the recorded history of Hindu religious thought and action. They are the rikah, sâmâni, and yagûmshi, known also by a variety of other designations, and characterised to a considerable extent by special verbs expressing the act of reciting or chanting them 2. Correspondingly the priests who had learned one of these varieties of religious expression and its mode of application to the sacrifice appear, again for aught we know from prehistoric times as individual actors (hotar, udgâtar, adhvaryu), in no wise qualified each by himself to shoulder the burden of literary knowledge or liturgic technique. The Hindus were at all times well aware that these religious forms are fragmentary and parts of a whole. The Rig-veda contains countless expressions indicating the insufficiency of the rikah to fulfil alone
HYMNS OF THE ATHARVA-VEDA.
1 Cf. Weber, Ind. Stud. I, 296; the author, Journ. Amer. Or. Soc. XI, 378,
note.
2 See Max Müller, History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 489 ff.; Ludwig, Der Rigveda, III, p. 25 ff.
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