Karma Mimansa

Author(s): Berriedale Keith
Publisher: Berriedale Keith

Page 80

GOD, THE SOUL, AND MATTER
71
(p 22). That term seems to apply more readily to the soul than to cognitions on his own theory, in which the cognition seems really to be inferred, as it actually is held to be by the school of Kumarila.
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42
How far Kumarila really differs from Prabhakara in these views is not clear. He certainly is credited by such texts as the Sastradīpikā (p 101) and the Sarvasiddhāntasamgraha (VIII, 37) with the view that the self is the object of direct perception by the mind, a view ascribed by the Nyayamañjari (p. 429) to the Aupavarsas, and this is perhaps a legitimate deduction from the doctrine, which he certainly held, that the existence of the self is established through the notion of I." The soul he holds to be the substratum of the I" element in cognition, and this appears to be practically identical with Prabhakara's view that the soul is the substratum of the self-illumined cognition, and the "I" element in it. Kumārila, however, adopts in the Tantravārttika" the doctrine that the soul 15 pure consciousness, though he distinguishes it from cognition, but this characteristic is hardly more than a verbal deviation from the view of Prabhakara, as far as practical results go.
2¢
Prabhakara and Kumārila are agreed as to the fact of there existing a multitude of separate souls, as is the necessary supposition of the Sutra and the theme of the Bhāṣya. The perception of another soul is obviously impossible, but one sees the activities of other bodies, and infers thence that they must be ensouled, just as one's own body is ensouled. Thus, if a pupil has learned half his task in one day, the fact that he continues to learn the next half the next day is a good ground for assuming that he possesses a soul. The same result can be arrived at from the fact that merit and demerit are infinitely various, and not one, as they must be if there were one soul only. The objection that pain is felt as localised, though there is but one soul in the body, is met by insisting that in reality the feeling is in the soul, andat is only the cause of the pain which can be said
1 Cf. Manameyodaya, p. 80 But in Ślokavärttika, p 525 (vv, 142, 143), he seems to accept self-illumination from the Bhasya.
* Trans., p. 516; so Štokavārttika, p. 187 (v. 167).