that he was once thought a dangerous innovator.  But, as has happened so often since, this early heretic became the corner stone of later orthodoxy.  He belonged to the school of the Yajur Veda and was apparently the main author of the new or White recension in which the prayers and directions are more or less separate, whereas in the old or Black recension they are mixed together.  According to the legend he vomited forth the texts which he had learnt, calling his fellow pupils “miserable and inefficient Brahmans,” and then received a new revelation from the Sun[220].  The quarrel was probably violent for the Satapatha Brahmana mentions that he was cursed by priests of the other party.  Nor does this work, while recognizing him as the principal teacher, endorse all his sayings.  Thus it forbids the eating of beef but adds the curious remark “Nevertheless Yajnavalkya said, I for one eat it, provided it is tender[221].”  Remarkable, too, is his answer to the question what would happen if all the ordinary materials for sacrifices were absent, “Then indeed nothing would be offered here, but there would be offered the truth in faith[222].”  It is probable that the Black Yajur Veda represents the more western schools and that the native land of the White recension and of Yajnavalkya lay further east, perhaps in Videha.  But his chief interest for us is not the reforms in text and ritual which he may have made, but his philosophic doctrines of which I have already spoken.  Our principal authority for them is the Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad of which he is the protagonist, much as Socrates is of the Platonic dialogues.  Unfortunately the striking picture which it gives of Yajnavalkya cannot be accepted as historical.  He is a prominent figure in the Satapatha Brahmana which is older than the Upanishad and represents an earlier stage of speculation.  The sketch of his doctrines which it contains is clearly a preliminary study elaborated and amplified in the Upanishad.  But if a personage is introduced in early works as expounding a rudimentary form of certain doctrines and in later works is credited with a matured philosophy, there can be little doubt that he has become a great name whose authority is invoked by later thought, much as Solomon was made the author of the Proverbs and Ecclesiastes and the Song which bears his name.

Yajnavalkya appears in the Brihad-Aranyaka as the respected friend but apparently not the chaplain of King Janaka.  This monarch celebrated a great sacrifice and offered a thousand cows with a present of money to him who should prove himself wisest.  Yajnavalkya rather arrogantly bade his pupil drive off the beasts.  But his claim was challenged:  seven Brahmans and one woman, Gargi Vacaknavi, disputed with him at length but had to admit his superiority.  A point of special interest is raised by the question what happens after death.  Yajnavalkya said to his questioner, “’Take my hand, my friend.  We two alone shall know of this.  Let this question of ours not be discussed in public.’  Then these two went out and argued, and what they said was Karma and what they praised was Karma[223].”  The doctrine that a man’s deeds cause his future existence and determine its character was apparently not popular among the priesthood who claimed that by their rites they could manufacture heavenly bodies for their clients.