Satapatha Brahmana

The Shatapatha Brahmana (IAST: Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, "Brāhmaṇa of one hundred parts") is a prose text describing Vedic rituals, history and mythology associated with the Śukla Yajurveda.

The text describes in great detail the preparation of altars, ceremonial objects, ritual recitations, and the Soma libation, along with the symbolic attributes of every aspect of the rituals.

Linguistically, the Shatapatha Brahmana belongs to the later part of the Brāhmaṇa period of Vedic Sanskrit (i.e. roughly the 8th to 6th centuries BCE, Iron Age India).

Michael Witzel dates this text to the 7th-6th centuries BCE.Jan N. Bremmer dates it to around 700 BCE. According to Julius Eggeling (who translated the Vājasaneyi mādhyandina recension to English), the final version of the text was committed in 300 BCE, although some of its portions are "far older, transmitted orally from unknown antiquity".

It survives in two recensions - Vājasaneyi mādhyandina śākhā and Kāṇva śākhā, with the former having the eponymous 100 adhyāyas (chapters), 7,624 kāṇḍikās (parts) in 14 kāṇḍas (books), and the latter 104 adhyāyas, 6,806 kāṇḍikās in 17 kāṇḍas. The name given to the Vājasaneyi mādhyandina śākhā is due to its origin being ascribed to Yājñavalkya Vājasaneya whose opinions are considered authoritative and quoted prolifically in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, apart from those of Śāṇḍilya.

The 14 books of the Madhyandina recension can be divided into two major parts. The first 9 books have close textual commentaries, often line by line, of the first 18 books of the corresponding samhita of the Yajurveda. The following 5 books cover supplementary and ritualistically newer material, besides including the celebrated Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad as most of the 14th and last book.

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