Karma Mimansa

Author(s): Berriedale Keith
Publisher: Berriedale Keith

Page 29

20
THE KARMA-MIMÄMSÅ
due to the operation of the unseen principle, that is the destiny begotten of man's previous acts, which thus secures to man pleasure or pain in due course.
In other cases the explanation rests, not on the interven - tion of memory, but on fusion of impressions. Thus the white shell appears as yellow as a result of jaundice, the cognition being a blend of the shell perceived without colour, and the yellowness of the bile in the eye, perceived without its substratum. So the bilious man feels sugar bitter, because his taste is a blend of the sugar and bile. The vision of two moons is due to a lack of co-ordination of the rays of light wbich issue from the eyes and bring back the images
In the case of merely doubtful cognitions the explanation of their character is that some object is seen as possessed of a quality which produces two discrepant remembrances, thus, seen at a distance a tall object may be either a pullar, or an ascetic buried in meditation and motionless.
As the Mimāmsā differs from the Nyāya in its view of the validity of cognitions, so it differs in its attitude to the mode in which a cognition itself is apprehended. In the Nyāya view this is an act of mental perception (mānasapratyaksa), and the Vijñānavāda school of Buddhism holds the opinion that one cognition is known by another, though, going further than the Nyâya, it draws the conclusion that, if the first cognition is to be apprehended by the second, it must have form, and form therefore does not belong to any external reality, as the Nyāya holds. The Mimāṁsă as early as the Vrttikära maintains that in apprehension it is the object that is perceived, not the cognition (arthavişayā ht pratyaksabuddhih, no buddhivisaya). As expounded by Prabhākara, consciousness (samvit), which is self-illumined, is ' . ' .' an object of cognition, but as cognitio '.. i samvit sarvedyā, na samvedyatayz). To say that the cognition is unknown is absurd, since the cognition of things is possible only if the cognition is known. The mode in which cognition is known is inference; in inference we grasp the existence of a thing only, not its
1 Himid thesd Suro'p 9 16 of Prakorana paniculate pp 56-63 Saddartonssomccata pp 28, 290