DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

116 DOCUMENTARY SOURCES [5.2
counter to brahmin claims of superiority or is so embarrassing that it
has- to be explained away. Nevertheless, it is difficult or impossible to
reconstruct the complete social framework without which such passages
cannot be fully evaluated.
The documents of the post-Rgvedic period fall into three major groups.
The first is the later vedic literature of which the Samaveda may be
discarded immediately, for its words are almost entirely from the Rgveda
with trifling adjustments for the purpose of musical chanting at the
fire-sacrifice. The Yajurveda has come down to us in several recensions,
the two main types being the Black, of which we may take the Taitti-riya
samhita (TS) as the most useful text, containing both ritual formula
and comment. The White Yajurveda (Vajasaneyi samhita) separates ritual
from exegesis, the ritual being about the same ; the explanatory portion,
the Satapatha Brahmana (SB) is the most important work of the type
that has been handed down to us. The SB describes various types of
graves, apparently for decarnated bones, whose future verification by
archaeologists may identify the terrain. In addition to these there are a
number of exegetical works on the Rgveda. The whole group carries us
into the Upanisadic period, the sequence being Veda, Brahmana,
Aranyaka, Up^nisad, in a continuous development that pays as little attention
as possible to extraneous traditions, which enter surreptitiously nevertheless.
The books run from ritual chant to ritual prescriptions, to ritual myth, to
mysticism transcending ritual, hence cover a steadily advancing type of
productive basis. To these must be added the fourth veda, the Atharvaveda
(AV) which was not a’ nitted to the level of the earlier three even as
late as the Upar ads. The ritual here is black and white magic on a much
smaller scale than the others ; one might say genre ritual.
The two epics Mahabharata (Mbh.) and Ramayana are difficult
to fit anywhere into the closed sequence forming our second group of
sources. They are ‘ post-vedic’, containing a historical germ to be
magnified or decried according to the writer’s predilections. The
Mbh. narrates the events of a great fratricidal war fought near Delhi
for an empire that stretched from Taxila to Bengal and deep into the
south. Such an empire was never a possibility before the 4th century B.C.