page_title: Vedas
section_title: Yajurveda
hierarchical_section_title: Vedas / Four Vedas / Yajurveda
caption_attribution_description: English: The samhita layers of the Vedas were composed between 1500 to 1000 BCE. These were orally transmitted for centuries, and likely written down sometime around the start of the common era. The above manuscript page is from the Taittiriya Samhita, in Devanagari script, Sanskrit language. This 19th-century document is shaped in the form of a palm leaf manuscript reminiscent of the heritage. The image is a part of endangered manuscripts preservation programme supported by Arcadia, a digitization initiative by Chinmaya International Foundation, with archival support provided by the British Library. This is a photo of the 2D historic manuscript. Wikimedia Commons PD-Art licensing guidelines apply.
context_page_description: The Vedas are a large body of religious texts originating in ancient India. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute the oldest layer of Sanskrit literature and the oldest scriptures of Hinduism.
  There are four Vedas: the Rigveda, the Yajurveda, the Samaveda and the Atharvaveda. Each Veda has four subdivisions – the Samhitas, the Aranyakas, the Brahmanas, and the Upanishads. Some scholars add a fifth category – the Upasanas. The texts of the Upanishads discuss ideas akin to the heterodox sramana-traditions.
  Vedas are śruti, distinguishing them from other religious texts, which are called smṛti. Hindus consider the Vedas to be apauruṣeya, which means "not of a man, superhuman" and "impersonal, authorless," revelations of sacred sounds and texts heard by ancient sages after intense meditation.
  The Vedas have been orally transmitted since the 2nd millennium BCE with the help of elaborate mnemonic techniques. The mantras, the oldest part of the Vedas, are recited in the modern age for their phonology rather than the semantics, and are considered to be "primordial rhythms of creation", preceding the forms to which they refer.
context_section_description: The Yajurveda Samhita consists of prose mantras. It is a compilation of ritual offering formulas that were said by a priest while an individual performed ritual actions such as those before the yajna fire. The core text of the Yajurveda falls within the classical Mantra period of Vedic Sanskrit at the end of the 2nd millennium BCE - younger than the Rigveda, and roughly contemporary with the Atharvaveda, the Rigvedic Khilani, and the Sāmaveda. Witzel dates the Yajurveda hymns to the early Indian Iron Age, after c. 1200 and before 800 BCE. corresponding to the early Kuru Kingdom.
  The earliest and most ancient layer of Yajurveda samhita includes about 1,875 verses, that are distinct yet borrow and build upon the foundation of verses in Rigveda. Unlike the Samaveda which is almost entirely based on Rigveda mantras and structured as songs, the Yajurveda samhitas are in prose and linguistically, they are different from earlier Vedic texts. The Yajur Veda has been the primary source of information about sacrifices during Vedic times and associated rituals.
  There are two major groups of texts in this Veda: the "Black" (Krishna) and the "White" (Shukla). The term "black" implies "the un-arranged, motley collection" of verses in Yajurveda, in contrast to the "white" (well arranged) Yajurveda. The White Yajurveda separates the Samhita from its Brahmana (the Shatapatha Brahmana), the Black Yajurveda intersperses the Samhita with Brahmana commentary. Of the Black Yajurveda, texts from four major schools have survived (Maitrayani, Katha, Kapisthala-Katha, Taittiriya), while of the White Yajurveda, two (Kanva and Madhyandina). The youngest layer of Yajurveda text is not related to rituals nor sacrifice, it includes the largest collection of primary Upanishads, influential to various schools of Hindu philosophy.
caption: A page from the Taittiriya Samhita, a layer of text within the Yajurveda
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