Karma Mimansa

Author(s): Berriedale Keith
Publisher: Berriedale Keith

Page 68

THE WORLD OF REALITY
59
precisely the same way as every other category. It cannot be held to be substance, for it exists in quality and notion as well as in substance. It cannot, in view of its relation to motion and to quality, be a quality; notion has no qualities, nor can a quality have a quality. It is not generality, for no comprehensive conception of it exists. It is quite other than the relation of inherence. It is not particularity, which in any case is not a true category, since it is no more than the quality of individuality. It must, therefore, be a distinct category, which is perceived in the apprehension of qualities, motions, or parts of two things as common to both. Kumārila's rejection of this category is based on the fact that similarity admits of degrees, e.g. the resemblance of a cow and a buffalo is considerable, that of a cow and a boar is slight; if there were a true category there could be no degrus. He agrees, however, with Prabhākara in regarding sinjilarity as directly perceptible. It consists, in his view, in the fact of the possession by two objects of the sanje arrangement of parts, and he attributes the erection of a special class of similarity to a misunderstanding by the Vaišeşikas of the doctrine of Vindhraväsin, which merely asserted that generality consisted in possession of unity of form (sārūpya), which was taken to mean likeness (sadrsya). The same quthor is elsewherecited by Kumarila as denying the doctrine of the existence of the subtle transmigrating body, a view accepted from him by Kumärila, and as enunciating the principle of the genesis of inference, which is accepted also in the Slokavörttiku. Who this author was is not apparent; he cannot, it is certain, be Isvarakrsna, nor is there any plausibility in identifying him with the Vindbyavāsa who plays a part in the history of the Samkhya, whether or not he was really īśvarakrsna." He may, of course, have been an older teacher of the Mīmārsā school itself.
Cause is not reckoned by either school as a category, a fact significant of the curious failure of Indian
1 Pp. 744 (v. 63), 393 (v. 1:3).
* Sāmkhya Systent, pp. 62, 69. Gunaratna (Saddarsy745071Ccaya p 104)cites a loka of Vandhyavásin (!), who was clearly, in his view, not Isvarakrsna, but it is liard to say of what value bis evidence in, or to whom he refers.