Page:History of India Vol 1.djvu/128

90 formulas are found only in the Samhita, the explanation and the ritual being assigned to the Brahmana. It is not improbable, as has been supposed, that it was to improve the old arrangement and to separate the exegetic matter from the formulas, that Yajnavalkya founded the new school known as the Vajasaneyins, and that their labours resulted in a new (Vajasaneyi) Samhita and an entirely separate (Satapatha) Brahmana.

But although the promulgation of the White Yajur-Veda is ascribed to Yajnavalkya, a glance at its contents will show that it is not the compilation of any one man or even of one age. Of its forty chapters only the first eighteen are cited in full and explained in due order in the first nine books of the Satapatha Brahmana, and it is the formulas of these eighteen chapters alone which are found in the older Black Yajur-Veda. These chapters are, therefore, the oldest portion of the White Yajur-Veda, and may have been compiled or promulgated by Yajnavalkya Vajasaneya. The next seven chapters are probably a later addition, while the remaining fifteen chapters are undoubtedly a still later accretion, and are expressly called Parisishta or Khila ("supplement").

Of the Atharva-Veda, we need only state that it was not generally recognized as a Veda till long after the period of which we are speaking, though a class of literature known as the Atharvangiras was growing up during the Brahmanic Period, and is alluded to in the later portions of some of the Brahmanas. Throughout the first three periods of Hindu history, and even in