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76
Madhva and his School
[CH.
of all important problems1. These Vedas were originally perceived by God; He imparted them to sages, who at the beginning of each creation, remembered the instructions of their previous birth. The alphabets and words are also eternal, as they are always apparent in the mind of the eternal God; so, though the syllables appear in the ākāśa, and though the Vedas consist of a conglomeration of them, the Vedas are eternal. The Mimämsä view that the acquirement of words is associated with activity is wrong; for words and their meanings are already definitely settled, and it is only by physical gestures that meanings are acquired by individual people. The purpose of a proposition is finished when it indicates its meaning, and the validity of the proposition is in the realization of such a meaning. While one is acquainted with such a meaning and finds that the direction involved in it, if pursued, will be profitable, one works accordingly, but when one finds it to be injurious one desists from it. All grammars and lexicons are based on the relation already existent between words and their meanings, and no action is implied therein.
All the scriptures refer to Nārāyaṇa as omniscient and the creator of all things. It is wrong to suppose that the scriptures declare the identity of the individual selves with God; for there is no proof for such an assertion.
The existence of God cannot be proved by any inference; for inference of equal force can be adduced against the existence of God. If it is urged that the world, being an effect, must have a creator or maker just as a jug has a potter for its maker, then it may also be urged on the contrary that the world is without any maker, like the self; if it is urged that the self is not an effect and that therefore the counter-argument does not stand, then it may also be urged that all makers have bodies, and since He has no body, God cannot be a creator. Thus the existence of God can only be proved on the testimony of the scriptures, and they hold that God is different from the individual selves. If any scriptural texts seem to indicate the identity of God and self or of God and the world, this will be contradicted by perceptual experience and inference, and consequently the monistic interpretations of these texts would
1
vijñeyam paramam Brahma jñāpikā paramā śrutiḥ anadi-nityă să tac ca vinā tām na ca gamyate.
Vişnu-tattva-vinirnaya, p. 206.
