Yajnavalkya Kanda. Adhyaya 3, Brahmana 1. Yajnavalkya at Janaka's sacrifice: the eight seizers
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Each mantra is given four ways: the Sanskrit in its Devanagari script, the same sounds in Roman letters, an English translation set in our own voice, and then the line once more in plain words, for a first and unhurried reading.
Not every passage is opened to the same depth. A few central mantras carry the full cross-school commentary, where the schools are set side by side. The rest are kept here whole and faithful, set in their place but not expounded, so the book stays entire and nothing is dropped for being thought minor.
Where the schools read a line differently, the difference is kept open. None is crowned and none is corrected. Each is met on its own terms, and where they contradict, the contradiction is left standing for you to sit with.
All that bears breath
"Yajnavalkya," he said, "with how many kinds of Rc verses will the Hotr do his work in this sacrifice today?" "With three." "Which are those three?" "The introductory verse, the offering verse, and the verse of praise as the third." "What does he win by them?" "Whatever here bears breath."
Asvala asks how many classes of Rg-verses the Hotr will use today. Yajnavalkya answers: three, the puronuvakya (introductory), the yajya (offering), and the sasya (praise). Asked what is won through them, he says: all that lives and breathes (whatever is prana-bhrt), gained by meditating on the correspondence between the three verse-classes and the living world.