Karma Mimansa

Author(s): Berriedale Keith
Publisher: Berriedale Keith

Page 12

DEVELOPMENT AND LITERARY HISTORY 3
uses arguments which are to be found in the Mimāmsa Sutra; thus he maintains that no text can be inferred from a custom for which a secular motive is apparent, and that a revealed text has superior validity to a custom whence a text might. be inferred. The corresponding rules in the Mimãmsā Sūtra (I, 3, 3-4) do not textually agree, and we may fairly conclude that at this date, probably not later than the middle of the third century B.C., tbe Sutra did not exist in its present form, but it is plain that the science itself was in full vogue, and a Mimārsaka appears to have been deemed a necessary member of a Parisad The influence of this discipline can plainly be discerned in the existing Sūtra texts; the works of Asyalāyana, Sankhāyana, Apastarnba, Hiranyakešin, Lātyāyana, and Drähyāyana have been composed under its influence, and the same consideration applies even to texts like those of the Baudhayana and Manara schools, which show greater affinities to the Brāhmaṇa style. We need not, of course, assume that the old sacrificial tradition was entirely lost, but we may be certain that it has been largely transformed in the process of remodelling,
Simultaneously with the remodelling of the Sūtras, there must have proceeded the definition of the rules of interpretation until they were finally codified in the Mimosa Sutra, which passes under the name of faimini, but the details of this process must remain unknown to us. What is certain is that the Mimāmsä Sitro presupposes a long history of discussion, and that its aphorisms, which often assume, without expressing, general rules of interpretation, deal largely with difficulties affecting individual Vedic texts, which had long been the subject of dispute, This characteristic is shown clearly in the mode of discussion followed in the text; the essential subdivision is the Adhikarana, which, according to the school, is to be deemed to fall into five parts; these Mädhava reckons as the subject of investigation (visaya), the doubt (sansaya), the first or prima facie view (piirvopaksa), the
1 Edited, Bibliotheca Indica, 1873-1889; trans.of Adhyâyas I-III, by Gangānātha Jhā. Sacred Books of the Hindus, vol. X