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RULES OF RITUAL INTERPRETATION 93
vidhi) is one which enjoins something otherwise unknown, as when a direction is given that grains are to be washed. A restrictive injunction (riyamavidhi) serves to fix as alone valid one out of several possible means of carrying out such an action, such as the husking of grain, which an injunction requires to be performed by pounding. An injunction of limitation or exclusion (parisankhyāvidhi) precludes one of several alternatives which otherwise might be resorted to; thus the injunction, “Five animals among animals with five nails may be eaten," precludes the eating of any animals not having that adornment. In this case the preclusion is implied, in other cases it may be explicit.
While an injunction directs a positive act, a prohibition (nusedha) serves to turn a man away from performing the action expressed in the verb and its object. The prohibition does not lead to any desirable result such as heaven, it serves none the less a useful purpose; the man, who obeys the direction not to eat the mysterious Kalañja, by observing this taboo escapes the hell which else had been his fate. In the technical phraseology of the Mīmāmsā the negative applies not to the sense of the verb, but to the optative affix; as an optative urges us to action, so a negatived optative turns away from it. In certain cases, however, this normal condition of affairs is precluded, and the negative is immediately connected with the verbal sense. Of these the most important is the case (IV, 1, 3-6) of negative passages headed, "His vows are as follows." The Brahmacārin is under an obligation not to look at the sun as a vow; the force of this is not that he is to avoid the evil result of looking, for there is no such result, but, as the context indicates, he is to effect the destruction of evil by the resolution of not-looking at the sun. A similar mode of interpreting an apparent prohibition is seen in the case of the rule, “He should say, 'Ho, we sacrifice,' at the beginning of all sacrificial verses, but not at the Anuyāja offerings." The reason for this procedure is that, if the rule were regarded as a prohibition proper, then it would necessarily follow that there was an antecedent rule enjoining the action, since a prohibition implies a previous rule to the opposite effect, and, this being so, the result of the
