Karma Mimansa

Author(s): Berriedale Keith
Publisher: Berriedale Keith

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THE KARMA-MIMAŃSĀ
the infinite regress, which seemed to be involved in the theory that a cognition could only be known through the instrumentality of another cognition, and perhaps still more by the aim of avoiding the conclusion, which was derived from this doctrine by the Idealist school of Buddhism, that there existed no self, but merely a series of cognitions, held together by no substantial unity. To the Mīmāmsā such a doctrine was naturally anathema, since the essence of the sacrificial ritual lay in the fact that there was a self who could profit by the performance of sacrifices, not merely in this world but after death. It might have been hard to convince men that sacrifices were worth performing, if the only reward held out had been success in this life, for facts would too often have controverted the claim that sacrifices were availing, when the reward was predicted for the next world, the issue was removed from empirical verification. But the denial of the possibility of introspection thus necessitated was obviously a real difficulty, and rendered the Mimāṁsā view less plausible than that of the Nyāya, which accepted cognition (vyavasāya) and as supervening upon it consciousness of cognition (anuvyavasáya). The disadvantage of the Nyāya view was that it tended to ignore the fact, which was strongly emphasised in the Mimāṁsā, of the necessary implication of the subject in all cognition. The distinction between the cognition and the subject, which possesses it, is illustrated clearly in the case of sleep; in it, the school holds, there is no cognition normally, and apparently no cogniser or object of cognition, yet the existence of both, despite sleep, is proved by the fact of remembrance of dreams. The knowing subject, therefore, is not, like the cognition, self-illumined, though as to its exact character Prabhākara and Kumārila are far from agreed.
Of forms of apprehension or cognition Prabhakara recognises five: perception, inference, analogy, scripture or verbal testimony, and presumption; while Kumärila accepts also non-perception or negation, in accordance with the view of the Vrttikāra, who thus supplements the bare mention of perception in the Sūtra (I, 1, 4), where it is defined as the contact of the sense organs with the object, which must be actually present. The analysis of perception given by