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PURVA-MIMAMSA
307
mental act, it being manifest equally whenever any object is known. The word which the Prabhakaras use for knowledge or experience is samvit which, being self-luminous (svaprakāśa), needs nothing else to make it manifest. Though ultimate in this sense, it is not eternal. It appears and disappears; and, as it does so, reveals both the object and the self simultaneously with itself. This triple revelation is what is described as trinuti-iñana. So far as other psychological details are concerned, it will suffice to remark that there is a still closer approximation here to the NyāyaVaiseṣika than in the previous school.
II
The main object of the Mimamsaka is to establish the authority of the Veda; but he does not like to do so solely on dogmatic considerations and therefore tries to seek rational grounds for it. He contends that his system does not consist merely in delivering settled judgments (upadesasastra), but is a reasoned inquiry (parikṣa-sastra). The very classification by him of revelation along with perception and inference under pramāņa shows it. The testimony of the Veda is but a particular means of knowing truth; and whatever value there is in it, the Mimāṁsaka holds, is due to its being a pramāņa like perception or inference. It is thus that he enters the arena of logic; and, though he may not be a rationalist in the full sense of the term, he cannot at the same time be described as a mere dogmatizer.
The system starts by postulating what is called the svataḥpramanya or the self-validity of knowledge (p. 260) both in respect of its origin (utpattau) and ascertainment (jñaptau).2 If a, b, and c (say) account for the genesis of knowledge, those causes themselves explain its validity also. Similarly the validity of knowledge is known when the knowledge itself is known; and no additional means is required therefor. All knowledge is presumably valid and an explanation is called
1 See SD. p. 18 and cf. Jaimini-sutra. I. i. 3. SD. pp. 19-23 and 48-50; PP. ch. iv.
