Baudhāyana-kalpa-sūtra,[1] which consists of the same principal divisions,
and the Bhāradvāja-sūtra, of which, however, only a few
portions have as yet been discovered. The Hiraṇyakeśi-sūtra,[2] which is
more modern than that of Āpastamba, from which it differs but little,
is likewise fragmentary, as is also the Vaikhānasa-sūtra;[3] while
several other Kalpa-sūtras, especially that of Laugākshi, are found
quoted. The recognized compendium of the White Yajus ritual is
the Śrauta-sūtra of Kātyāyana,[4] in twenty-six adhyāyas. This
work is supplemented by a large number of secondary treatises,
likewise attributed to Kātyāyana, among which may be mentioned
the Charaṇa-vyūha,[5] a statistical account of the Vedic schools,
which unfortunately has come down to us in a very unsatisfactory
state of preservation. A manual of domestic rites, closely connected
with Kātyāyana's work, is the Kātīya-gṛihya-sūtra,[6] ascribed to
Pāraskara. To Kātyāyana we further owe the Vājasaneyi-prātiśākhya,[7]
and a catalogue (anukramaṇī) of the White Yajus texts.
As regards the former work, it is still doubtful whether (with Weber)
we have to consider it as older than Pāṇini, or whether (with
Goldstücker and M. Müller) we are to identify its author with Pāṇini's
critic. The only existing Prātiśākhya[8] of the Black Yajus belongs
to the Taittirīyas. Its author is unknown, and it confines itself
entiilely to the Taittirīya-saṃhitā, to the exclusion of the Brāhmaṇa
and Āraṇyaka.
D. Atharva-veda.—The Atharvan was the latest of Vedic collections to be recognized as part of the sacred canon. That it is Atharva-veda-saṃhitā. also the youngest Veda is proved by its language, which both from a lexical and a grammatical point of view, marks an intermediate stage between the main body of the Ṛik and the Brāhmaṇa period. In regard also to the nature of its contents, and the spirit which pervades them, this Vedic collection occupies a position apart from the others. Whilst the older Vedas seem clearly to reflect the recognized religious notions and practices of the upper, and so to speak, respectable classes of the Āryan tribes, as jealously watched over by a priesthood deeply interested in the undiminished maintenance of the traditional observances, the fourth Veda, on the other hand, deals mainly with all manner of superstitious practices such as have at all times found a fertile soil in the lower strata of primitive and less advanced peoples, and are even apt, below the surface, to maintain their tenacious hold on the popular mind in comparatively civilized communities. Though the constant intermingling with the aboriginal tribes may well be believed to have exercised a deteriorating influence on the Vedic people in this respect, it can scarcely be doubted that superstitious practices of the kind revealed by the Atharvan and the tenth book of the Ṛik must at all times have obtained amongst the Āryan people, and that they only came to the surface when the received the stamp of recognized forms of popular belief by the admission of these collections of spells and incantations into the sacred canon. If in this phase of superstitious belief the old gods still find a place, their character has visibly changed so as to be more in accordance with those mystic rites and magic performances and the part they are called upon to play in them, as the promoters of the votary's cabalistic practices and the averters of the malicious designs of mortal enemies and the demoniac influences to which he would ascribe his fears and failures as well as his bodily ailments. The fourth Veda may thus be said to supplement in a remarkable manner the picture of the domestic life of the Vedic Āryan as presented in the Gṛihya-sūtras or house-rules; for whilst these deal only with the orderly aspects of the daily duties and periodic observances in the life of the respectable householder, the Atharvaveda allows us a deep insight into “the obscurer relations and emotions of human life”; and, it may with truth be said that “the literary diligence of the Hindus has in this instance preserved a document of priceless value for the institutional history of early India as well as for the ethnological history of the human race” (M. Bloomfield). It is worthy of note that the Atharvaveda is practically unknown in the south of India.[9]
This body of spells and hymns is traditionally associated with two old mythic priestly families, the Atharvans and Angiras, their names, in the plural, serving either singly or combined (Atharvāgirasas) as the oldest appellation of the collection. The two families or classes of priests are by tradition connected with the service of the sacred fire; but whilst the Atharvans seem to have devoted themselves to the auspicious as aspects of the fire-cult and the performance of propitiatory rites, the Angiras, on the other hand, are represented as having been mainly engaged in the uncanny practices of sorcery and exorcism. Instead of the Atharvans, another mythic family, the Bhṛigus, are similarly connected with the Angiras (Bhṛigvangirasas) as the depositories of this mystic science. In course of time the lore of the Atharvans came also to have applied to it the title of Brahmaveda; a designation which was apparently meant to be understood both in the sense of the Veda of the Brahman priest or superintendent of the sacrifice, and in that of the lore of the Brahma or sacred (magic) word, and the supreme deity it is supposed to embody. The current text of the Atharva-saṃhitā[10]—apparently the recension of the Śaunaka school—consists of some 750 different pieces, about five-sixths of which is in various metres, the remaining portion being in prose. The whole mass is divided into twenty books. The principle of distribution is for the most part a merely formal one, in books i.-xiii. pieces of the same or about the same number of verses being placed together in the same book. The next five books, xiv.-xviii., have each its own special subject: xiv. treats of marriage and sexual union; xv., in prose, of the Vrātya, or religious vagrant; xvi. consists chiefly of prose formulas of conjuration; xvii. of a lengthy mystic hymn; and xviii. contains all that relates to death and funeral rites. Of the last two books no account is taken in the Atharva-prātiśākhya, and they indeed stand clearly in the relation of supplements to the original collection. The nineteenth book evidently was the result of a subsequent gleaning of pieces similar to those of the earlier books, which had probably escaped the collectors' attention; while the last book, consisting almost entirely of hymns to Indra, taken from the Ṛik-saṃhitā, is nothing more than a liturgical manual of recitations and chants required at the Soma sacrifice; its only original portion being the, ten so-called kuntāpa hymns (127-136), consisting partly of laudatory recitals of generous patrons of sacrificial priests and partly of riddles and didactic subjects.
The Atharvan has come down to us in a much less satisfactory state of preservation than any of the other Saṃhitās, and its interpretation, which offers considerable difficulties on account of numerous popular and out-of-the-way expressions, has so far received comparatively little aid from native sources. Less help, in this respect, than might have been expected, is afforded by a recently published commentary professing to have been composed by Sāyaṇa Āchārya; serious doubts have indeed been thrown on the authenticity of its ascription to the famous Vedic exegetic. Of very considerable importance, on the other hand, was the discovery in Kashmir of a second recension of the Atharva-saṃhitā, contained in a single birch-bark MS., written in the Śāradā character, and lately made available by an excellent chromo-photographic reproduction. This new recension,[11] ascribed in the colophons of the MS. to the Paippalāda school, consists likewise of twenty books (kāṇḍa), but both in textual matter and in its arrangement it differs very much from the current text. A considerable portion of the latter, including the whole of the eighteenth book, is wanting; while the hymns of the nineteenth book are for the most part found also in this text, though not as a separate book, but scattered over the whole collection. The twentieth book is wanting, with the exception of a few of the verses not taken from the Ṛik. As a set-off to these shortcomings the new version offers, however, a good deal of fresh matter, amounting to about one-sixth of the whole. From the Mahābhāshya and other works quoting as the beginning of the Atharva-saṃhitā a verse that coincides with the first verse of the sixth hymn of the current text, it has long been known that at least one other recension must have existed; but the first leaf of the Kashmir MS. having been lost, it cannot be determined whether the new recension (as seems all but certain) corresponds to the one referred to in those works.
The only Brāhmaṇa of the Atharvan, the Gopatha-brāhmaṇa,[12] is doubtless one of the most modern and least important works Atharva-veda-brāhmaṇa. of its class. It consists of two parts, the first of which contains cosmogonic speculations, interspersed with legends, mostly adapted from other Brāhmaṇas, and general instructions on religious duties and observances; while the second part treats, in a very desultory manner, of various points of the sacrificial ceremonial.
- ↑ The Śulva-sūtra has been published, with the commentary of Kapardisvāmin, and a translation by G. Thibaut, in the Benares Pandit (1875). The Dharma-sūtra has been edited by E. Hultzsch (Leipzig, 1884), and translated by G. Bühler, S.B.E. xiv.
- ↑ The H. Gṛihya-sūtra, ed. J. Kirste (Vienna, 1889); trans. H. Oldenberg, S.B.E. vol. xxx.
- ↑ An account of the Vaikh. Dharmasūtra given by T. Bloch (Vienna, 1896).
- ↑ Edited by A. Weber, 1858.
- ↑ Weber, Ind. Stud. iii.
- ↑ Text and German translation by A. Stenzler.
- ↑ Edited, with Uvaṭa's commentary, and a German translation, by A. Weber, Ind. Stud. iv.; another ed. in Benares Sansk. Ser. (1888).
- ↑ The work has been published by W. D. Whitney, with a translation and a commentary by an unknown author, called Tribhāshyaratna, i.e. “jewel of the three commentaries,” it being founded on three older commentaries by Vararuchi (? Kātyāyana), Māhisheya and Ātreya.
- ↑ A. Burnell, Classif. Index of Tanjore Sansk. MSS. p. 37.
- ↑ Edited by Professors Roth and Whitney (1856); with Sāyaṇa's commentary, by Shankar P. Pandit (4 vols., Bombay, 1895-1898). Index verborum, by Whitney, in J. Am. Or. S. vol. xii., Eng. trans. by R. H. T. Griffith (in verse) (2 vols., Benares, 1897); by W. D. Whitney (with a critical and exegetical commentary), revised and edited by Ch. R. Lanman (2 vols., Harvard Or. Ser., 1905); and (with some omissions) by M. Bloomfield, S.B.E. vol. xlii.; cf. also Bloomfield, “The Atharvaveda,” in Bühler's Encycl. (1899).
- ↑ The first account of a copy of it was given by Professor R. v. Roth, in his academic dissertation, “Der Atharvaveda in Kaschmir” (1875). The reproduction on 544 plates, edited by M. Bloomfield and R. Garbe (Baltimore, 1901).
- ↑ Edited in the Bibl. Ind. by Rājendralāla Mitra.
