unimportant, are all fundamentally the same singular unit called Brahm manifested in
myriad and diverse ways, that therefore nothing that exists which is not Brahm is not
true, that this Brahm is the only supreme Authority and Divinity in the entire creation,
that this Brahm and the individual Atma or pure consciousness of the creature are one
and the same, and not two independent units, that this Atma is the pure self, etc.
Anything contrary to this is false and fallacious.
It is believed that all major Upanishads belonging to the Yajur Veda tradition are
either directly or indirectly expounded and enunciated by and elucidated upon by
Yagyawalkya or any one of his long line of disciples who had acquired this eclectic
knowledge from him. (Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad, 2/6/1-3, 4/6/1-3 and 6/5/1-3.)
One such example is the Ram Uttar Tapini Upanishad of the Atharva Veda
tradition in which sage Yagyawalkya has taught even the teacher of the Gods, i.e.
Brihaspati, about the esoteric secrets and the profound spiritual importance as well as
the significance of the Tarak Mantra, and about the divine nature of Lord Ram and
his great Mantras that can provide a creature with Mukti (spiritual liberation and
deliverance) once and for all.
The high spiritual prowess and reach of Yagyawalkya can be judged from the fact
that he could communicate directly with the Supreme Being called Mandal Purush in
his visible manifestation as the brilliant and splendorous Sun as described in Mandal
Brahmin Upanishad of Shukla Yajur Veda tradition. The fact that Yagyavalkya had a
repeated communion with the Sun God, at least on four occasion is clearly marked
out in Mandal Brahmin Upanishad, 1/1/1-2; 2/1/1-2; 3/1/1-2; 4/1/1-2.
Yagyawalkya was a rich householder sage and seer. This is borne out by the fact
that (a) on each occasion when he attended great debates he was showered with huge
largesse by king Janak in the form of immense quantity of gold and thousands cows
(Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad, 3/1/1-2, 4/1/1-7, 4/3/33, 4/4/23), and (b) when he asks
his wife Maitreyi to partition his vase estate before he went on to take Sanyas (Brihad
Aranyaka Upanishad, 2/4/1-2, 4/5/1-2).
The creation of Yajur Veda’s two branches:- The word ‘Yajus’ means a liturgy of
hymns chanted during the fire sacrifice. The Yajur Veda has been classified into
Krishna and Shukla branches. It would be pertinent and interesting to add a brief note
here on why the Yajur Veda has come to be known as Krishna and Shukla, meaning
‘black’ and ‘white’ respectively. The Yajur Veda Sanhita (a collection of Mantras or
hymns) is classified into these two types for a variety of reasons. On of the probable
reasons for this Yajur Veda having two names is that the collection in the Sanhita that
came to be known as ‘Krishna’ had a mixture of prose and poetry, and hence
considered ‘impure and corrupted’. This is because primarily the Vedas were
composed in poetry form with the verses structured according to one or the other
methods of poetical composition called ‘Chandas’. Prose as style of composition
came later on and was regarded as an interpolation, interposition or juxtaposition
which is all tantamount to corrupting the original method. Hence, that text which had
both the poetry and prose was deemed to be ‘corrupted and impure form of the Vedic
text’, and therefore called ‘Krishna’—the dark one. On the other hand, the Sanhita
which had only poetry was considered un-adulterated and pure form of the Vedic
text, and hence called ‘Shukla’ or the white one, the colour ‘white’ being the colour
of purity, immaculacy, divinity and holiness.
Since the primary use of the hymns of the Vedas in earlier times was for
incantatory chanting during religious fire sacrifices, the poetical mode of composition
was more suitable than the prose model. That is why these hymns were composed in
‘Chandas’ which are the different styles in which Sanskrit verses are composed. Later
on, when these verses were also being used for purposes other than the fire sacrifices,
the prose model evolved and developed. The Upanishads are mainly in the prose
model because they are philosophical treatises and not ritualistic incantatory chanting.
Another plausible reason is that the verses of the Krishna Yajur Veda are more
difficult to understand than those of the Shukla Yajur Veda. Hence, the former were
kiana
(Kiana)
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