Karma Mimansa

Author(s): Berriedale Keith
Publisher: Berriedale Keith

Page 83

74
THE KARMA-MIMĀMSA
without cognition or feeling of any sort. This view, though in entire harmony with the Mimāmsā, has suffered the usual fate at the hands of the later texts," in which it is asserted that the final condition of man is a state of constant bliss.
In what manner then does the performance of sacrifice operate as affecting the soul? The Mimāmsā, in both schools is confident that there is no question of rewards coming from the deity to whom the offerings are made; no deity is either eternal or omnipresent, and there could be no assurance of it ever receiving the numerous offerings made by diverse votaries, apart from the difficulty of the deity conferring rewards. There must, therefore, be a capacity, which does not exist prior to the sacrificial action, either in the principal performance or in the agent, but which is generated in the course of the performance. Before a man performs a sacrifice, which will lead to heaven, there is an incapacity in the offering and in the man himself to secure that result, but, when he has performed it, he beconies, as a result of the action, endowed with a potency, styled Apūrva, which in the course of time will secure for him the end desired. The existence of this potency is testified to in the scriptures; its necessity is apparent by the ineans of proof known as presumption. We find in the Veda assertions that sacrifices produce certain results, and, as the operation of the sacrifice, as we see it, is transient, the truth of the scripture would be vitiated if we did not accept the theory of Apūrva, Nor is there anything illogical in the doctrine; every action sets in force activities in substances or agents, and these come to fruition when the necessary auxiliaries are present. The action specified is called into existence by the injunction contained in the form of an optative in a sentence in the Veda.
From this doctrine Prabhākara dissents, elaborating instead a theory which is obviously a refinement on the simple view which Kumarila accepts from the older writers of the school and which best suits the Mimärsä Sutra. In his opinion the injunction rests in the sentence as a whole,
1 Manameyodava, p. 88.
* II, 1, I ff; Prakarana pañcika, pp. 185 ff; Tantravürttika, II 1, 1-5.