Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 42.djvu/63

 INTRODUCTION. Hx

��lo), are relegated to the rear. At Vait. Su. 6, i the Atharvan is again placed at the head of the four Vedas. Gop. Br. I, 3, 4 lauds the Atharvan compositions as the greatest religious manifestation, etad vai bhuyish^//a;« brahma j^ad bhr/'gvangirasa/;, and at I, 2, i6 (cf. I. 2, i8) the Atliarvan figures as the fourth Veda by the name of Brahma-veda, being here correlated with the service of the Brahman-priest as the overseer at the j-rauta-ceremonies ^. At I, 1,9 there is quoted a stanza, thoroughly Upanishad in character, which shows that the Atharvanists correlated their Veda with the knowledge of brahma, the higher and subtler religious conception, which at all times is raised above any special knowledge of the constituent parts of the Vedic religion : ' The highest Veda was born of tapas, it grew in the heart of those that know the brahma 2.' The Atharvan ritual texts never cite the trayi vidya in formulary order without including the fourth Veda ^, differ- ing in this regard even from the text of the Saw/hita and the Atharvan Upanishads (see pp. xxxii, xliii). The first half of the Gop. Br. (1, 5, 25) ends with the assertion that they who study the trayi reach, to be sure, the highest heaven (trivish/apaw tridivaw nakam uttamam), but yet the Athar- vans and Angiras go beyond to the great worlds of Brahma (ata uttare brahmaloka mahanta//).

As regards the Brahman, the overseer at the i-rauta-

performances, the Vait. Su. 1, i states that he must be

conversant with the Brahma-veda, and in 1,17.

of pfra°hman I ^ this priest is described as the lord of beings,

in the ritual Jqj.j ^f ^[^^ world, &c. These expressions

texts. ' . ,

seem to indicate that he is the representa- tive at the sacrifice of the personified god Brahman. At II, 2 (cf Gop. Br. I, 2, 16) the Brahman is again ordered to be conversant with the atharvaiigirasa/z, this time in

��' ^atasro va ime hotra, hautram adhvaiyavani audgatra//^ brahmatvam.

- Thus according to the version of Saya«a, Introduction to the AV., p. 5, sreshi/io hi vedas tapaso^^dhio-ato brahma^;7ana;« hridaye sawbabhuva. Ra^^en- dralalaniitra's edition, i-reshi'/zo ha vedas tapaso ^ dhi^^to brahmr^yanaw kshitaye sa;«babhuva, 'it was created for the destruction of the oppressors of Brahmans.'

^ See especially Gop. Br. II, 2, 14, where the atharvangirasa/; are added every time in liturgical formulas to the riiak, ya^uwshi, and samani.

�� �