The Vedas have not come down to the present time without considerable dispute as to the text. As might have been expected, seeing that this teaching was given orally, discrepancies arose. One account mentions no less than twenty-one versions (Sakhas) of the Rig-Veda; another gives five of the Rig-Veda, forty-two of the Yajur-Veda, mentions twelve out of a thousand of the Saman-Veda, and twelve of the Atharva-Veda. And as each school believed that it possessed the true Veda, it anathematized those who taught and followed any other. The Rig-Veda Sanhita that has survived to the present age is that of one school only, the Sakala; the Yajur-Veda is that of three schools; the Sama-Veda is that of perhaps two, and the Atharva-Veda of one only.

"The history of the Yajur-Veda differs in so far from that of the other Vedas, as it is marked by a dissension between its own schools far more important than the differences which separated the school of each [of the] other Vedas. It is known by the distinction between a Yajur-Veda called the Black--and another called the White--Yajur-Veda. Tradition, especially that of the

[paragraph continues] Puranas, records a legend to account for it. Vaisampayana, it says, a disciple of Vyasa, who had received from him the Yajur-Veda, having committed an offence, desired his disciples to assist him in the performance of some expiatory act. One of these, however, Yajnavalkya, proposed that he should alone perform the whole rite; upon which Vaisampayana, enraged at what he considered to be the arrogance of his disciple, uttered a curse on him, the effect of which was that Yajnavalkya disgorged all the Yajus texts he had learned from Vaisampayana. The other disciples, having been meanwhile transformed into partridges (tittiri), picked up these tainted texts and retained them. Hence these texts are called Taittiriyas. But Yajnavalkya, desirous of obtaining Yajus texts, devoutly prayed to the Sun, and had granted to him his wish--'to possess such texts as were not known to his teacher.'" [**] And thus there are two Yajur-Vedas to this day; the Black being considered the older of the two.

As to the date of the Vedas, there is nothing certainly known. There is no doubt that they are amongst the oldest literary productions of the world. But when they were composed is largely a matter of conjecture. Colebrooke seems to show from a Vaidick Calendar that they must have been written before the 14th century B.C. Some assign to them a more recent, some a more ancient, date. Dr. Haug considers the Vedic age to have extended from B.C. 2000 to B.C. 1200, though he thinks some of the oldest hymns may have been composed . B.C. 2400. Max-Muller gives us the probable date of the Mantra, or hymn portion of the Vedas, from B.C. 1200 to B.C. 800, and the Brahmanas from B.C. 800 to B.C. 600, and the rest from B.C. 600 to B.C. 200.