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INTRODUCTION.
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sented as meeting, apparently for the first time, with Svetaketu Åruneya, Somasushma Satyayagñi, and Yâgñavalkya, while they were travelling (dhåvayadbhih). Probably we are to understand by this that these divines had then come from the west to visit the Videha country. A considerable portion of the Brihadåranyaka deals with learned disputations which Yâgñavalkya was supposed to have held at Ganaka's court with divers sages and with the king himself. In Brih. År. II, 1, 1 (and Kaush. Up. IV, 1) Ganaka's fame as the patron of Brahmanical sages is said to have aroused the jealousy of his contemporary, Agâtasatru, king of the Kasis. The name Ganaka is also interesting on account of its being borne likewise by the father of Sita, the wife of Råma. Unfortunately, however, there is not sufficient evidence to show that the two kings are identical. With the legend of the other great epic, the Satapatha offers more points of contact; but on this subject also no definite results have as yet been obtained, it being still doubtful whether the internecine strife between the royal houses of the Kurus and Pankålas which, according to the late Professor Lassen, forms the central fact of the legend of the Mahâbhârata, had not yet taken place at the time of the Satapatha-brâhmana, or whether it was already a thing of the past. In the Mahâbhârata, I, 4723, Pandu, in speaking to his wife Kunti, mentions Svetaketu, the son of the Maharshi Uddâlaka, as having lived not long ago 3.'
As regards the two recensions of the Satapa tha-brâhmana, this is hardly the place to enter into any detailed discussion of their mutual relations. Nor is my acquaintance with the Kanva text as yet sufficiently extensive to do justice to this important question. I intend, however, to publish before long a number of extracts from several kändas of this recension,-including the text of all the
1 They occupied the country about the modern Benares (Kasi).
Dhritarashtra Vaikitravirya, whose sons and nephews form the chief parties of this great feud, is mentioned in the Kathaka 10, 6. From this passage---which, unfortunately, is not in a very good condition in the Berlin MS.-it would appear that animosities had then existed between the Kurus and Paikalas. It is doubtsul, however, whether this part of the Kathaka is older than the bulk of the Satapatha. See Weber, Ind. Stud. III, 469 seq.
* See Weber, Ind. Stud. I, 176.
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