As the Vishnu Purana tells it
Vishnu Purana, Book 3, chapter 5 · 2 min read
The sage Vaishampayana had learned the Yajurveda from Vyasa himself, and he taught it in twenty-seven branches to as many pupils. Among them was a young man named Yajnavalkya, known for his devotion and for his obedience to his teacher.
Now the sages had made a rule among themselves. At a certain time they were all to gather on Mount Meru, and whoever stayed away would carry, within seven nights, the guilt of killing a Brahmin.
Vaishampayana alone failed to come. And within the week, by an accident, his foot struck his sister's child, and the child died.
He called his pupils together.
"This guilt is mine," he said. "Perform the penance for me, all of you."
The other pupils bowed their heads. Yajnavalkya spoke.
"How am I to do penance alongside these?" he said. "They are poor, feeble Brahmins, sir. There is no force in them."
The teacher was furious. "You speak with contempt of these young Brahmins. What use to me is a pupil who will not do as I say? Give back everything you have learned from me."
"I spoke in good faith," said Yajnavalkya. "But as for what I have learned from you, I have had enough of it. Here it is."
And he brought it up. He retched, and the verses of the Yajus came out of him in solid form, stained with blood, and lay on the ground. Then he walked away.
The other pupils did not want the verses lost. They turned themselves into partridges and picked them up. A partridge in Sanskrit is a tittiri, and that, the Purana says, is why that branch of the Veda is called the Taittiriya.
Yajnavalkya now had nothing. He wanted the Yajus again, and there was no teacher on earth he could ask.
So he turned to the Sun and put all his strength into praising him.
"Glory to the Sun, the gate of freedom, the spring of light, who is the Rig, the Yajus and the Saman together. Glory to him who feeds the gods and the fathers and sends rain to men. Until he rises no one can pray, and water itself does not make clean. Glory to Savitr, to Surya, to Bhaskara, to Vivasvat. I bow to the eye of the world, who rides in a golden car."
The Sun came to him. He came in the shape of a horse.
"Ask for what you want," said the horse.
Yajnavalkya bowed down to the ground before the lord of the day.
"Give me the Yajus," he said. "Give me verses that even my teacher does not know."
The Sun gave them. These were verses that no one had studied before, and Vaishampayana had never heard them. Because the Sun taught them in the form of a horse, which is a vajin, the Brahmins who recite this Yajus are called the Vajins. Fifteen schools grew from it, through Kanva and Yajnavalkya's other pupils.
As the Mahabharata tells it: the goddess in his mouth
Mahabharata, Shanti Parva 319 · 2 min read
In the Mahabharata it is Yajnavalkya himself who tells the story, as a teacher grown famous, to King Janaka of Mithila. The king has asked him about the highest truth, and the sage begins with where his own knowledge came from. He says nothing of a quarrel.
He had worshipped the giver of heat with the hardest penances, he tells the king, and at last the Sun was pleased with him.
"Ask for the boon your heart is set on, however hard it is to get," the Sun said. "I am not easily moved, but I will give it gladly."
Yajnavalkya bowed his head. "I have no knowledge of the Yajus. I want to know it, and soon."
"I will give it," said the Sun. "Saraswati, who is made of the essence of speech, will enter your body. Open your mouth."
He opened his mouth, and the goddess went in.
And he began to burn. He could not bear the pain, and he threw himself into a stream. He did not understand that the Sun had done this for his good. He was even angry with him.
"Bear it a little while," the Sun said as he burned. "It will pass, and then all will be cool."
It passed. When the Sun saw him at ease again he made a promise. The whole Veda, with its appendices and its Upanishads, would rise in Yajnavalkya by an inner light. He would set out the whole Shatapatha, and after that his mind would turn to freedom. Then the Sun went on to the hills where he sets.
Yajnavalkya walked home full of joy, and there he thought of Saraswati. She stood before him at once, adorned with all the vowels and consonants, with the syllable Om before her. He made the guest's offering to her and another to the Sun, and sat down with his mind on those two. Then the whole Shatapatha Brahmana appeared of itself before his inner eye.
He taught it to a hundred pupils. His uncle Vaishampayana, he tells the king, sitting with his own pupils round him, was not pleased.