Karma Mimansa

Author(s): Berriedale Keith
Publisher: Berriedale Keith

Page 16

• DEVELOPMENT AND LITERARY HISTORY 7
Vedānta Sūtra, that work cannot be earlier than the third century A.D., for Aryadeva, Nāgārjuna's contemporary, refers to the zodiacal signs and the week-days, which were not known in India until that epoch. But it is possible that the Sūnyavāda, which can be recognised in Asvaghosa, was of older fame than Nāgārjuna, though on the whole it is more likely than not that it was the dialectical ability of that teacher which made the doctrine the object of Vedāntic confutation. It is, then, a plausible conclusion that the Mimāmsā Sūtra does not date after 200 A.D., but that it is probably not much earlier, since otherwise it would have been natural to find in the Mahabharata some reference to it and to its author.
As we have seen, the Sūtra must from the first have been accompanied by a comment, which in course of time was lost or became defective. The first commentator of whom we have certain knowledge is a Vrttıkāra, from whose work a long extract is made in the Bhasya of Sabarasyāmin on Mimarnsä Sūtra, I, 1, 5, in which the author attacks and refutes Buddhist views. If we believe Kumārila, the discussion is directed in part against the Vijñänaväda school, in part against the Sūnyavāda, but in this case we have every reason to distrust his assertion, for, plainly by error, he ascribes the major portion of the discussion to Sabarasvămin, and not to the Vittikāra. It is, therefore, not improbable that he is also in error in finding any reference to the Vijnanavāda, for the passage seems to deal with one topic only, and that the Sünyavāda. It follows, accordingly, that the date of the Vsttikára was probably not later than the fourth century A.D., since, had he lived later, he would hardly have omitted an explicit discussion of the tenets of the idealistic school of Buddhism.
The name of the Vsttikāra is uncertain. The conjecture? that he was Bhavadāsa, mentioned in one place by Kumārila, may be dismissed as wholly without support. The current opinion makes him to be Upavarşa, who, we know from Samkara (Vihanta Sūtra, II1, 3, 53) wrote on both the texts. To this the objection has been brought that in the passage cited
1 Gangānātba Jha, trans. of Slokovārttika, p. 116.