Where does Yajurveda have "karpūragauraṁ karuṇāvatāraṁ....bhavaṁ bhavānīsahitaṁ namāmi" verse?

Question

One of the most famous slokas used for Lord Shiva (Rudra) during arti or prayer is

कर्पूरगौरं करुणावतारम् संसारसारं भुजगेन्द्रहारम् |
सदा वसन्तं हृदयारविन्दे भवं भवानीसहितं नमामि ||

karpūragauraṁ karuṇāvatāraṁ sansārsāram bhujagendrahāram |
sadāvasantaṁ hṛdayāravinde bhavaṁ bhavānīsahitaṁ namāmi ||

Translation:

I bow to Shiva along with Shakti (Parvati), who resides ever in the lotus of my heart, Who is the color of camphor, who is filled with kindness, who is the support of the world and who wears a snake as a garland.

This verse has word "bhujagendrahāram" which means the one who has Lord of serpents as ornament. This is interesting because i think Rudra in Vedas is not mentioned with Serpents (I can be wrong too).

Many sites on internet including wiki say this verse is from Yajurveda and wiki cites Devichand's translation of Yajurveda but I couldn't find it in that book. Also, I couldn't find it through Digital Corpus of Sanskrit.

Where exactly Yajurveda has this verse? Is it from Krishna Yajurveda or Shukla Yajurveda? If from Samhita, who is Rishi and what is meter for this verse? I think Devata must be Rudra, but also mention Devata for this Mantra. If this is from Brahmana or Aranyaka, mention exact verse location.

Note: I want to know exact location of this verse. Please don't provide some external site which says this verse can be found in Yajurveda.

Answer 1

This verse is not present in the Yajurveda.

This verse is a present in a commentary to a verse in the so-called “Brhihad Brahma Nitya Karma Sammuchya” (see page 51 of this book here). This book and many others (for example this one) is (was) a north/central Indian equivalent to the current versions of Sandhyavandan type of post-Vedic practices that are still popular in south India.

This book is a collection of cherry-picked verses from the Saṃhitā and provided with self-made verses eulogizing Shiva and others. The verse in your question is one of such self-made verses and attributed to the Saṃhitā.

Probably, the verse in question is attributed to Yajurveda because it was popularized in the books that claim to present "Nitya karma" as per Yajur Veda!

As it is in vogue even today the ardent devotees of Purāṇic protagonists like Shiva, Rama, Krishna have a proclivity to marry verses of the post-Vedic period with some or the other Saṃhitā.

Such practices are desperate attempts to portray their beliefs as Vedic as it provides an element of credence of having a continuation from the antiquity.

Unfortunately, for these ardent devotees, such post-Vedic verses do not match with the morphology of the Saṃhitā!