Karma Mimansa

Author(s): Berriedale Keith
Publisher: Berriedale Keith

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THE KARMA-MIMĀMSĂ
philosophers to find a due place for this issue, even when, as in the case of the Nyāya-Vaišeşika, they by no means ignore its importance. But there seems 110 evidence that either Prabhākara or Kumärila contributed anything of novelty or value to the doctrine. In his discussion of perception, as we have seen, the former makes use of the doctrine of the division of causes into the material or inherent (samaväytkārana), and immaterial or non-inherent (asamavāyi), a distinction, doubtless, taken from the Nyāya-Vaišeşika, The denial by Kumarila of the conception of inherence would have precluded him from adopting such a distinction of causes.
Causation, however, affords Kumārila an argument in favour of his thesis of the reality of non-existence. That entity he classifies as prior, as the non-existence of curd in milk; subsequent or destruction, as the non-existence f ik in curd; mutual, as the non-existence of the horse in the cow and vice versa; and absolute, as the non-existence of a horn on the head of the hare. Without the recognition of the first two kinds, he contends, there could be no idea of causation, in its prior negation lies the character of the curd as effect, in its destruction that of the milk as the cause. Everything has two aspects: it regards its self, it exists, as regards anything else it is non-existent; and both these aspects are real and necessary to each other. It is only through this fact that we can sly, “There is no jar on the ground," or that we can ever differentiate things, which is possible only on the ground of a real existence of non-existence. It is impossible to perceive this entity, for perception must deal with the existent; the process of intellection is, therefore, purely mental; the ground is seen, the jar remembered, and then ensues the purely mental cognition styled negation, which must be distinguished from inference or any other form of know ledge.
1 It may be noted that Salikanātha commented on the Prasasta, padabhäşya (Bodleian Catalogne, p. 244).
Slokavāritika, pp. 473-92; Manameyodaya, pp. 5864, 114-18, cf. Nyayamañjari, pp. 49-63 , Şaddarsanasamuccaya, pp. 295-98.