Karma Mimansa

Author(s): Berriedale Keith
Publisher: Berriedale Keith

Page 90

RULES OF RITUAL INTERPRETATION 81
ielation to the energy in the agent excited by the injunction The energy requires a result to be achieved, an instrument wherewith to achieve it, and an indication of the procedure to be followed. The last requisite is furnished by various subsidiary injunctions, the instrument and the object are given by the verb yajeta and the qualification pasukamah, which may be reduced to yāgena pasuri bhavayet," he should effect or realise cattle by the use of the sacrifice." It remains to dispose of udbhidă, and, various other suggestions as to how it should be taken (e.g. as denoting a spade) being rejected, the conclusion is arrived at that it merely serves to limit the idea expressed by yāgena, is only a name, and thus deserves a separate place in the classification of texts.
Distinct from the Brāhmana is the Mantra (I, 2, 31-53) of which no effective definition is attempted in the texts. The Mantras are divided into the RC, Säman and Yajus, according as they are recited, sung, or muttered, usually in a low tone, though some of the Yajus Mantras, the Nigadas, are said out aloud; the Yajus is usually held to be unmetrical, though with small accuracy. Mantras do not lay down injunctions, but in the main they serve to denote something of value in connection with injunctions, especially the deity to whom offering is to be made. The tendency to find this characteristic is much overdone in the Mimāmsā, though even it is compelled to recognise now and then that a Mantra must be regarded as merely of a eulogistic character, or even that it is destined to have some supernatural fruit The Mīnāmsā position is, of course, an inevitable result of eliminating the goodwill of the deity as a real factor in the sacrifice; the bymns with which their authors intended to confer pleasure on the gods become a somewhat cumbrous, and not altogether useful, part of the sacrificial apparatus.
Apropos of the Mantras of the Yajus type, however, the Mīmāmsā develops some sensible rules of construction (II, 1, 46-49), rendered necessary by the fact that, while the metre in the case of the Rc and the song in the case of the Säman determined the extent of the Mantra, the Yajus
1 Mimarsabalaprakäsa, pp. 58-70; Mimorisaparibhāşā, p. 40.