Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 42.djvu/46

 xlii HYMNS OF THE ATHARVA-VEDA,

general neither the polemic nor the apologetic note which

characterises the ritualistic writings of the Atharvan. We

find, to be sure, in the late Prawava Up. a spo- TheAV. in ,. .^, ,. . , ..

the radic, II not sohtary. assumption of superiority

Atharvan qj^ ^j^g ^^^.^ ^f j-j^g AV.^ and an interpolated

Upanishads. '■ ^

passage in the Prai-na Up. V, 5 betrays the distinct tendency to secure at any cost the correlation of the Atharvan with the highest brahma ^. The authority of Atharvanic teachers, Sanatkumara, Angiras, Paippalada, &c., is, of course, cited with especial frequency in the Atharvan Upanishads, helping to confer upon them an esoteric school character. But in general, all that may be said is, that the Atharvan Upanishads mention the fourth Veda along with the other three more frequently than the corresponding tracts of the other schools, that the Athaivan is quietly added to the trayi^ whether other literary forms like the itihasapura/^am, &c., appear in the sequel, or not. Even these Upanishads, however, occasionally lapse into the more frequent habit of the bulk of the Vedic literature, and fail to refer to the Atharvan, whether consciously or notj it seems impossible to tell. Thus the Muwr/aka Up. I, I, 5 counts the four Vedas (Atharvan included) along with the Ahgas as the lesser science, above which towers the science of Brahma: /vgvedo, ya^urveda//, samavedo ^tharvaveda/^ jiksha, &c. But in II, 1,6 the list is, rika/i sama ya^uwshi diksha yno-uaska.. The Praj-na Up. II, 8 says of the Pra//a, 'life's breath' (personified), r/shiwaw karham satyam atharvaiigirajam asi, which seemingly con- tains an allusion to the Athaivan writings, but in II, 6 we have, pia;/e sarva;;/ pratish///itam r/y^o ya^u;«shi samani yagriah kshatra/// brahma ka ^. See also Mahanaraya//a Up. 22. This betrays the usual preoccupation with the traividya, which is not quite effaced by the possible allusion to the Atharvan in II, 8. The Nrzsiwhapurvatapani Up.

' See Ind. Stud. I, 296 ; IX, 51.

- See Ind. Stud. I, 453, note, and cf. Lohtlingk's critical edition of the Pra.fna in the Proceedings of the Royal Saxon Academy, November, 1890.

° It would have been easy to substitute for the last four words, atharvah- girasaj kx ye, or the like. Cf. also Tiaj-na V, 5, alluded to above.

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