In plain words
They grieve, "Swami is not speaking to us," but they do not consider whether they have given this word the value it deserves. This itself is the secret between God and the devotee. What is the reason? Among their many kinds of saṃskāras, wicked saṃskāras and bad habits from birth after birth keep coming along with them.
Hang garlands of jasmine round a monkey's neck, deck it with silk and yellow robes with care, seat it in splendour on a jewelled throne: will it give up the crooked mind of its kind?
You put so many garlands on a monkey, dress it up in so many kinds of ornament and seat it on a great jewelled throne; but will it give up all its old vāsanās? Does that monkey give up its smell? It does not. In the same way, with these old vāsanās of theirs: however much good you do them, however you help them, however you teach them, these never stop in the least; they go right on.
Make a bed of green camphor and set the plant in it, pour fragrant musk over it for manure, pour good rose water on it as it grows, and see: does the onion give up its own stink?
Even soil will take on the scent of camphor, even soil will take on the scent of musk, even soil will take on the scent of rose water, but not the onion. People of the onion's breed, of the monkey's breed, such as these, cannot take in such precious and sacred words.
Yājñavalkya too, in those days; but, unlike these, he went on repenting. The men of today do not even repent. Further, to cover up their own faults, they are ready to throw blame on God. They make no effort in the least to recognise their own faults. These are lower than the monkey; Yājñavalkya, without meddling in the least in matters of this kind, grieved deeply for the wrong he had done and turned it into a kind of tapas. That is precisely why Āditya came, pleased with that tapas, and Āditya himself gives him again those Vedas that Vaiśampāyana had given. This is what they called the Āditya sampradāya. This is what they called the Śukla Yajurveda.
The Śukla Yajurveda grew in North Bhārata, the Kṛṣṇa Yajurveda in South Bhārata. They grew in this way, and these Vedas have names opposed to each other, but the meaning in the two is one.