Upanishads Part I · 55 of 237

Third Prapāthaka: KHÂNDOGYA-UPANISHAD: THIRD KHANDA.

THIRD KHANDA. 1. The western rays of the sun are the honey-cells behind. The Sâman verses are the bees, the Sâma-veda sacrifice is the flower, the water is the nectar.

2. Those very Sâman verses (as bees) brooded over the Sâma-veda sacrifice; and from it, thus brooded on, sprang as its (nectar) essence, fame, glory of countenance, vigour, strength, and health.

3. That flowed forth and went towards the sun. And that forms what we call the dark (krishna) light of the sun.

Context

The northern rays draw their bees from the Atharvangiras, the hymns of the Atharva-veda, with the Itihasa-purana, the cycle of ancient stories, as the flower. Müller's footnote is alert here: there is no Atharva-veda sacrifice in the formal sense, so the place that would correspond to the sacrifice is filled by the recitation of the old stories themselves. The Mahabharata and the Puranas, in their oldest forms, are sitting in this passage at the level of the formal yajna. The narrative function of telling and listening to ancient tales is being treated as a sacrificial act. This is the Upanishad's earliest warrant for what later India will work out as itihasa-purana itself a fifth Veda, with epic listening counted as scripture-hearing.Khandogya 3.4; cf. Mahabharata 1.1.267 on itihasa as fifth Veda