Karma Mimansa

Author(s): Berriedale Keith
Publisher: Berriedale Keith

Page 45

36
THE KARMA-MIMÄMSA
ible, through the instrumentality of intelligible sounds, that 15 words, whose meaning is known, The further analysis of Prabhākara shows that each word is composed of letters which are severally apprehended, impressions of the earlier letters blending with that produced by the cognition of the last letter to bring about the idea of the whole word, which alone has the power to bring about the comprehension of a single definite meaning. The letters, then, are the means of verbal cognition, since it is they which by combination compose the word and bring about the comprehension of its meaning, With Kumärila Prabhākara agrees in disregarding the grammatical school's doctrine of Sphota, an entity which is invented to meet the difficulty felt by the grammarians as to the possibility of any combination of impressions from individual letters producing the unity, which enables us to comprehend the meaning of a word, and in this view the Vedānta, Nyāya. Vaiseşika and Samkhya are at one with the Mimārsā, leaving the Yoga only to support the doctrine of the grammarians.
The meaning of words is declared by Jaimini to be natural (autpattika), and Prabhākara insists on the fact that words cannot be supposed to owe their meanings to convention, whether human or divine. The view of the school in this regard can hardly be regarded as anything else than an attempt to bring the doctrine of verbal testimony into harInopy with their traditional beliefs in the nature in the Veda, which doubtless long preceded their speculations on the nature of the relation of word and meaning, The Nyāya view, that meanings were given to words by a convention due to the action of God, offended the Mimāmsā belief that the Veda had no creator, and that no God, as understood by the Nyāya, existed. The alternative of human convention contradicted flatly the Mimärasā belief that the essential function of the Veda was to lay down injunctions for the performance of actions, whence arose an invisible potency (apūrva) leading to a desirable end, and that this potency was a thing of
1 Cf. Max Muller, Six Systems, pp.527-44; a full refutation of the dactrine of Bhartrhari that Sabda is the source of the world and is the lower form of the absolute, Brahman, is given in Nyayainasjari, pp 531-36; cf. Sarvadaršanasarngraha, ch, xiii.