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312 OUTLINES OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY eternity of the Veda. It merely serves as a negative aid to it by precluding the conclusion which one may draw at once that whatever is verbal in form must necessarily have had an origin in time. The Veda consists of words, and so far it is like any other literary work. If the permanence of the word and meaning constituted the criterion of eternity, all literary works, in fact all uttered statements, would alike be eternal. If the Veda alone is so and not other works also, it should be traced to some unique feature it possesses; and such a feature, it is said, is the particular order (ānupūrvi) in which the several words occur in it. When the Mimāṁsaka states that the Veda is eternal, it is this permanence of the text that he means. He views the Veda as produced by no author-human or divine; and he maintains that it has been preserved intact during a beginningless period by being handed down from teacher to pupil with scrupulous care. This belief is based on the circumstance that tradition, though going back to a far-distant antiquity, has throughout been silent in regard to the authorship of the Veda, while in the case of even very ancient works-like those of Buddha or the Mahābhārata--mention is made of some author or other. While the order of the words in those works was determined by their authors, it is self-determined in the Veda. This argument again, granting that tradition is really silent on the authorship of the Veda, is negative and can lead to nothing that is decisive.
Thus the Mimāṁsaka doctrine of the fixity of the Vedic text rests upon a certain view of language it takes and upon the supposed absence of all reference in long-standing tradition to its having been composed by one or more authors. In neither case, it is clear, is the premise adequate to support the important conclusion that is drawn from it. The belief in its present form is therefore nothing more than a dogma. This 'idolatry of scripture' appears comparatively late and seems to have been arrived at by extending to the form of the Veda what was once taken to hold good of its content. The truth concealed under this purely scholastic view, therefore, is that the Veda embodies eternal verities. In the case of
Jaimini-sútra. I. i. 27-32.
