Devalok
Legend · 3 tellings · Pan-India

Yajnavalkya receives the Yajus from the Sun

Who is in it

  • Yajnavalkya the pupil who loses and regains the Veda
  • Vaishampayana the teacher (his maternal uncle in the epic)
  • Surya the teacher who appears as a horse
  • Saraswati enters his body as speech (Mahabharata)

Texts: Vishnu Purana, Mahabharata, Shatapatha Brahmana

The story, beat by beat

  1. Vaishampayana misses the sages' meeting on Meru and incurs guilt; he kills his sister's child by accident.
  2. He asks his pupils to do the penance; Yajnavalkya scorns the other pupils.
  3. The teacher orders him to give back what he has learned; he disgorges the Yajus.
  4. The other pupils become partridges and pick it up: the Taittiriya.
  5. Yajnavalkya praises the Sun.
  6. The Sun appears as a horse and gives him Yajus texts unknown to his teacher.

teacher and pupil knowledge pride hymn

How it is told, place by place

Base telling · Primary text (translation)

Vishnu Purana 3.5

Pan-India All traditions

Vaishampayana teaches twenty-seven branches of the Yajurveda. He alone fails to attend a meeting on Meru and so incurs Brahmin-killing within seven nights, accidentally kicking his sister's child to death. He asks his pupils to perform the penance. Yajnavalkya refuses to do it with such feeble Brahmins; ordered to give up his learning he brings up the Yajus stained with blood and leaves. The others, as partridges (tittiri), pick it up. Yajnavalkya hymns the Sun, who appears as a horse and grants him Yajus texts called ayatayama, unknown to Vaishampayana; those who study them are called Vajins, and fifteen branches arise through Kanva and others.

The Vishnu Purana, tr. H. H. Wilson (1840) § 3.5

Primary text (translation)

Mahabharata, Shanti Parva 319

Pan-India All traditions

Yajnavalkya tells Janaka that he won the Yajus from Surya by penance. The Sun bids him open his mouth and Saraswati enters his body; he burns, plunges into a stream and is even angry; the Sun tells him to endure and he grows cool. The Sun promises that the whole Veda and the Shatapatha will appear in him. At home he thinks of Saraswati, who appears with the vowels and consonants and Om; he offers arghya to her and the Sun, and the Shatapatha Brahmana appears to his mind. He teaches a hundred pupils, to the displeasure of his maternal uncle Vaishampayana, with whom he later divides a sacrificial fee.

What is different here:

First-person; no quarrel, no vomiting, no partridges, no horse. Saraswati is the means. Vaishampayana is his uncle.

The Mahabharata, tr. K. M. Ganguli (1883-96), sections read for the Vedic layer § shanti.319

Primary text (translation)

Shatapatha Brahmana 14.9.4.33 (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 6.5.3)

Pan-India All traditions

The closing lineage of teachers ends with Aditya, the Sun, and states that these pure (white) Yajus formulas, coming from Aditya, are proclaimed by Yajnavalkya Vajasaneya.

What is different here:

One sentence, no narrative: the seed of the later stories.

The Upanishads, tr. F. Max Muller (Sacred Books of the East 1 and 15) § brihadaranyaka.6.5.3

Sources: The Vishnu Purana, tr. H. H. Wilson (1840); The Mahabharata, tr. K. M. Ganguli (1883-96), sections read for the Vedic layer; The Upanishads, tr. F. Max Muller (Sacred Books of the East 1 and 15)

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