Development of Hinduism

Author(s): M M Ninan
Publisher: M M Ninan

Page 57

2. DATES OF VEDAS
intricate and this Veda is a compilation of all the rituals and their chants in a book. Atharvan Veda is a collection of Magic Spells and medicaments. These were finally written down well into the Third century AD
"The Vedas have not come down to the present time without considerable dispute as to the text. As might have been expected, when this teaching was given orally, discrepancies arose. One account mentions no less than twenty-one schools (Sakhas) of the Rig-Veda: another gives five of the RigVeda, forty-two of the Yajur-Veda; mentions twelve out of a thousand of the Saman-Veda, and twelve of the Atharva-Veda. And as each school believed that it possessed the true Veda, it anathematized those who taught and followed any other version. The Rig-Veda Sanhita that has come down to the present age is that of one school only, the Sakala; the Yajur-Veda is that of three schools; the Sama-Veda is that of perhaps two, and the Atharva- Veda of one only. "The history of the Yajur-Veda differs in so far from that of the other Vedas, as it is marked by a dissension between its own schools far more important than the differences which separated the school of each [of the] other Vedas. It is known by the distinction between a Yajur-Veda called the Black-and another called the White-Yajur-Veda. Tradition, especially that of the Puranas, records a legend to account for it. Vaisampayana, it says, the disciple of Vyasa, who had received from him the Yajur-Veda, once having committed an offence, desired his disciples to assist him in the performance of some expiatory act. One of these, however, Yajnavalkya, proposed that he should alone perform the whole rite; upon which Vaisampayana, enraged at what he considered to be the arrogance of Yajnavalkya, uttered a curse on him, the effect of which was that Yajnavalkya disgorged all the Yajus texts he had learned from Vaisampayana. The other disciples, having been meanwhile transformed into partridges (tittiri], picked up these tainted texts and retained them.
Hence these texts are called Taittiriyas. But Yajnavalkya, desirous of obtaining Yajus texts, devoutly prayed to the Sun, and had granted to him his wish,-' to possess such texts as were not known to his teacher."" And thus there are two Yajur-Vedas to this day; the Black being considered the older of the two.
As to the date of the Vedas, there is nothing certainly known. There is no doubt that they are amongst the oldest literary productions in the world; but as to when they were composed all is conjecture. Colebrooke seems to show from a Vaidick Calendar, that they must have been written before the 14th century B.C. Some assign to them a more recent, some a more ancient date.
Hindu Mythology, Vedic and Puranic By William Joseph Wilkins 1882.
53