Page:A history of Sanskrit literature (1900), Macdonell, Arthur Anthony.djvu/190

 eighteen chapters of the Vājasaneyi Saṃhitā which are quoted and explained word by word in the first nine books of its own Brāhmaṇa, while merely a few mantras from the following seventeen chapters are mentioned in that work. According to the further testimony of an ancient index of the White Yajurveda, attributed to Kātyāyana, the ten chapters 26-35 form a supplement (khila).

The internal evidence of the Vājasaneyi Saṃhitā leads to similar conclusions. The fact that chapters 26-29 contain mantras relating to ceremonies dealt with in previous chapters and requiring to be applied to those ceremonies, is a clear indication of their supplementary character. The next ten chapters (30-39) are concerned with altogether new ceremonies, such as the human sacrifice, the universal sacrifice, and the sacrifice to the Manes. Lastly, the 40th chapter must be a late addition, for it stands in no direct relation to the ritual and bears the character of an Upanishad. Different parts of the Saṃhitā, moreover, furnish some data pointing to different periods of religious and social development. In the 16th chapter the god Rudra is described by a large number of epithets which are subsequently peculiar to Çiva. Two, however, which are particularly significant, Īçāna, "Ruler," and Mahādeva, "Great God," are absent here, but are added in the 39th chapter. These, as indicating a special worship of the god, represent a later development. Again, the 30th chapter specifies most of the Indian mixed castes, while the 16th mentions only a few of them. Hence, it is likely that at least some which are known to the former chapter did not as yet exist when the latter was composed.