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780
Presidential Address,
by means of it, proving the existence of God, Soul and' Immortality. In its later stages the Nyāya mistook the means for the end, and spent all its energies in building up a science of Logic, discussing its minutest details with a hair-splitting subtlety which has no parallel in the history of human thought.
The system of Pūrvamīmāmsā was at first a logic of Vedic exegetics, but since it was undertaken in the interests of the religion of the sacrifice, the sacrifice occupied a large place in the religious philosophy of that system. Every detail of the sacrifice became a fetish till at last in the philosophy of the system God. was not, and the gods were little more than somethings which were expressed by words in the dative case in the formulae of offerings. Yet the principle which was responsible for this evolution, or degeneration if you please, was far from ignoble. If the Brāhmaṇas became the centre of Vedic literature, and sacrifice the essence of religion, it was because doing and not being was regarded as the ideal of life. Secondly, in attributing to the sacrifice a compelling power which governed gods as well as men, the system of Pūrvamīmāmsā placed Law above the arbitrary will of gods. Besides this, by defining Pramāna as that which makes known what was not known already, it separated the spheres of Reason and Faith: thus, the Veda ruled only where the senses and reason had no authority, that is, in matters which transcended their sphere. The school also distinguished between the main proposition and obiter dicta, and between a precept and the legend by which it is supported. It thus winnowed the wheat from the chaff, and rationalised religion.
