Page:A history of Sanskrit literature (1900), Macdonell, Arthur Anthony.djvu/186

 the recension of the same school, together with the commentary of Sāyaṇa, was subsequently edited in India. Of the Kauthuma recension nothing has been preserved excepting the seventh prapāṭhaka, which, in the Naigeya subdivision of this school, forms an addition to the first ārchika, and was edited in 1868. Two indices of the deities and composers of the Sāmaveda according to the Naigeya school have also been preserved, and indirectly supply information about the text of the Kauthuma recension.

The Yajurveda introduces us not only to a geographical area different from that of the Rigveda, but also to a new epoch of religious and social life in India. The centre of Vedic civilisation is now found to lie farther to the east. We hear no more of the Indus and its tributaries; for the geographical data of all the recensions of the Yajurveda point to the territory in the middle of Northern India occupied by the neighbouring peoples of the Kurus and Panchālas. The country of the former, called Kurukshetra, is specifically the holy land of the Yajurvedas and of the Brāhmaṇas attached to them. It lay in the plain between the Sutlej and the Jumna, beginning with the tract bounded by the two small rivers Dṛishadvatī and Sarasvatī, and extending south-eastwards to the Jumna. It corresponds to the modern district of Sirhind. Closely connected with, and eastward of this region, was situated the land of the Panchālas, which, running south-east from the Meerut district to Allahabad, embraces the territory between the Jumna and the Ganges called the Doab ("Two Waters"). Kurukshetra was the country in which the Brahmanic religious and social system was developed, and from which it spread over the rest of India. It claims a further historical