The Rishis of the Yajur Veda

The Yajurveda is the Veda of sacrificial formulae (yajus), the second of the four Vedas and the liturgical book of the Adhvaryu priests, who performed the physical work of the sacrifice and spoke or murmured its mantras as they did it. The White Yajurveda, the Vajasaneyi Samhita, is the form handed down in the school of Yajnavalkya: forty books of verses and prose formulae, many of the verses drawn from the Rig Veda, arranged in the order of the rites, from the New and Full Moon sacrifices and the Soma ritual to the Horse Sacrifice. Tradition ascribes the mantras to inspired seers, the rishis; they are anonymous to us, and the text is traditionally dated to about 1200–900 BCE, though the dating is uncertain.

The English text is Ralph T. H. Griffith's translation, published at Benares in 1899. It is given here as one work in forty books, with the numbered verses kept as separate paragraphs. The collection mixes metrical verses with short prose formulae, such as the opening of Book I, which are the mantras themselves. The last book is the Isa Upanishad, and Griffith's own notes and commentary are not reproduced.