Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 42.djvu/62

 Iviii HYMNS OF THE ATHARVA-VEDA.

other names : they have become the typical teachers of

the triviaHties which these texts profess.

But over and above this the ritual texts raise certain

special claims regarding the position of the Atharvan

among the Vedas, and they further make the Nature of the ^

especial claims demand With strident voice and obvious

"^^^exts^'""^ polemic intention that certain offices shall be reserved for the priests conversant with that Veda. The position of these texts may be stated under three heads. First, they are not content with the rather vacillating attitude of the non-Atharvanic texts which refer in general to a threefold Veda, reserving, as we have seen, the honorific mention of the fourth Veda to more or less well-defined occasions, especially to moods when it is felt desirable to call into requisition the entire range of Vedic literary composition in addition to the trayi vidya (e.g. itihasa, pura//a, gatha, &c.). Secondly, the office of the Brahman, the fourth priest at the jrauta-ceremonies, who oversees and corrects by means of expiatory formulas (prayaj/^itta) the accidents and blunders of hotar, udgatar, and adhvaryu, is said to belong to an Atharvavedin, and the Vaitana-SLitra in fact exhibits the bhr/gvaiigirovid in possession of that office. Thirdly, a similar claim is advanced in respect to the office of the purohita. Again and again it is stated that the purohita, guru, or brahman of a king, the chaplain or house-priest, shall be conversant with the Atharvan writings, shall be an Atharvan priest, and this claim, as we have seen above (p. xlvi), is supported to some extent by later Brahmanical treatises not derived from Atharvan schools. Cf. also below, p. Ixvii.

The Gopatha-b)ahina;/a, \\\ its opening chapters I, 1,4-

10, describes the cosmogonic origin of the universe and

Exaltntion ^^^^ Vedas from the lone brahma. UnHke

of the AV. other texts, which as a rule ignore the Athar-

in f^eneml

" ■ van in these creative accounts, the atharvan and the arigiras texts are placed at the head ; the other Vedic texts (r/k, ya^u//, and saman, I, i, 6), as well as the subsidiary compositions (the five Vedas, called sarpaveda, pij-a/taveda, asuraveda, itihasaveda, and pur^«aveda, I, i,

�� �