Karma Mimansa

Author(s): Berriedale Keith
Publisher: Berriedale Keith

Page 24

DEVELOPMENT AND LITERARY HISTORY 15
world. The Tattvacintāmani of Gangesa repeatedly attacks the Mimämsä views of the nature and validity of proof, and the controversy is continued in the voluminous literature based on that important text, and in the short text-books of the combined school of Nyaya-Vaisesika. In his commentary on Prasastapāda's Bhasya Sridhara, from the point of view of the Vaiŝeşika deals freely with Mimāmsā views; moreover, the Jain Haribhadra (ainth century) includes in his Saddarsanasamuccaya, commented on by Gunaratna, an account of the Mīmāmsā, and there are chapters upon it in the Sarvasiddhantasamgraha, falsely ascribed to Samkara, and in Madhava's Sarvadarsanasamgraha. The former work deals separately with the doctrines of Prabhakara and Kumārila, it betrays its late character by its attempt to show that Prabhākara was the pupil of Kumarila, and by converting the doctrine of Kumarila into a form of the Vedanta. The work of Madhava gives a long specimen of the conflicting views of the two schools as to the interpretation of the opening of the Sutra, and contains an interesting exposition of the arguments for and against the eternity of the Veda, and the self-evidence of cognition.
Jayanta Bhatta's work' is of special interest, as it is the product of a member of a family skilled in the Mimämsä, and its author freely attacks Prabhakara and his followers, and repeatedly cites the Slokavārttika. The author's grandfather was confirmed in his faith in the efficacy of sacrifice by obtaining as the result of one offering the village of Gauramulaka, doubtless from a king of Kashmir, for Jayanta's great-grandfather, Saktisvämin, was a minister of Muktapida, better known as Lalitaditya. Incidentally Jayanta affords a welcome confirmation of the date of Vacaspati Misra, whom he quotes (pp. 120, 312), for, as Lalitãditya's reign ended about 753 A.D., it is impossible to place Jayanta later than the second half of the ninth century, and hence the disputed era of the year 898 given by Vacaspati himself as the date of his Nyāyasūcī
1 Ed. Benares, 1895. His quotation from Vacaspati on Sutra II, 1, 32, is found at p. 312. His son, Abhinanda, wrote the Kadambarika. thasara and lived c. 900 A.D.; Thomas, Kavindravaçanasamuccaya p. 20.