What the Yajur Veda Is

The Yajur Veda is the second of the four Vedas. Its name comes from yajus, the prose formula a priest speaks during a sacrifice. So the short answer is: the Yajur Veda is the Veda of the sacrificial formulas — the priest’s handbook for the rite.

The four Vedas split up the job:

• Rig Veda — the hymns of praise, in verse.
• Sama Veda — the same hymns, set for singing.
• Yajur Veda — the formulas the priest speaks to perform the rite.
• Atharva Veda — household prayers, healing, and protective charms.

At a real Vedic sacrifice, four priests sit at the fire. The hotar recites the Rig. The udgatar sings the Sama. The adhvaryu — the priest who actually does the work, pouring, measuring, arranging — uses the Yajur. The brahman watches and corrects. The Yajur Veda is the book the busiest priest reads from.

That tells you what kind of book it is. It is not poetry to read for beauty. It is not philosophy to study for wisdom. It is procedure — what to say and what to do, in what order, with what materials, for what result. Think of it as a manual: small clean instructions for specific acts.

That said, the Yajur Veda is not only procedure. Mixed in with the formulas are:

• some of the most famous mantras in living Hindu use (Sri Rudram, Chamakam, the Mrityunjaya, the Shanti prayers);
• the Purusha Sukta (it appears here too, slightly different);
• and, at the very end of one recension, a short Upanishad — the Isha — that contains one of the deepest single ideas in the whole tradition.

So in one book you get: the working manual of the rite, the great mantras still chanted today, and a small wisdom text at the close. That combination is what makes the Yajur Veda worth reading even if you have no intention of performing a sacrifice. Most of what most Hindus chant in temples and homes comes from this book.

The next chapter explains why there are two Yajur Vedas — the Krishna and the Shukla — and what to know about each.