ORIENTAL SERIES.

348
VEDA.
hymns taken from the Eig, hut it contains some prose passages
which are new. Many of the hymns show considerable deviations
from the original text of the Rig. These differences may
perhaps be attributable either to an original difference of the
traditional text or to modifications required by the ritualistic
uses of the Yajur. The Yajur-veda is the priests' office-book,
arranged in a liturgical form for the performance of sacrifices.
As the manual of the it priesthood, became the great subject of
study, and it has a great number of different Sakhas or schools.
It has two Sanhitas, one called the Taittiriya Sanhita, the other
Yajasaneyi Sanhita, commonly known as the Black and White
Yajur. Of these, the former is the more ancient, and seems to
have been known in the third century B.C. These Sanhitas
contain upon the whole the same matter, but the arrangement
is different. The White Yajur is the more orderly and systematic,
and it contains some texts which are not in the Black.
The Sanhita of the Taittiriya or Black Yajur is arranged in
7 Kawrfas or books, 44 Prasnas or chapters, 651 Anuvakas or
sections, and 2198 Karaftkas or pieces, "fifty words as a rule
}
a Ka?wftka.' The Sanhita of the Yajasaneyi or White
forming
Yajur is in 40 Adhyayas or chapters, 303 Anuvakas, and 1975
How the separation into two Sanhitas arose has not been
ascertained. It probably originated in a schism led by the sage
Yajnawalkya; but if it did not, it produced one, and the
adherents of the two divisions were hostile to each other and
quarrelled like men of different creeds. In later days a legend
was invented to account for the division, which is thus given by
the Yishwi and Yayu Purawas : The Yajur-veda, in twenty-seven
branches ($akhas), was taught by Yaisampayana to his
disciple
Yajnawalkya. Yaisampayana had the misfortune to kill his
sister's child by an accidental kick, and he then called upon his
disciples to perform the appropriate expiatory penance. Yajnawalkya
refused to join the " miserable inefficient Brahmans,"
and a quarrel ensued. The teacher called upon the disciple to
give up all that he had ]earnt from him ; and the disciple, with
the same quick temper, vomited forth the Yajur texts which he
had acquired, and they fell upon the ground stained with blood.
The other pupils wore turned into partridges (Tittiri), and they
picked up the disgorged texts; hence the part of the Yeda