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332 OUTLINES OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY that it is an independent guide in discriminating right from wrong, but in the sense that it constrains us to follow dharma when it is once known. The communication of what is right or wrong is still left to an external code. The appeal in its double form, we may add, implies that man is conceived here not merely as a spiritual being himself, but also as a member of a society of spiritual beings.
In one important respect the aim of the Mimārsā, it is clear, should differ from that of the other systems. It should pursue not the ideal of mokşa but dharma, whether as a means to an end or as an end in itself. Such seems to have been its aim till a certain stage was reached in the history of the system. In that early period in the growth of the Mimamsā, only dharma, artha and kāma (tri-varga) were accepted (p. 109) as human values and not the fourth one of mokşa also. To speak generally, dharma is still the highest ideal in the Kalpa-sūtras; but the doctrine in its present form has practically thrown it overboard, and replaced it by the ideal of mokşa. The transformation means the virtual abandonment of many of the rites taught in the Veda.. But the change is of a far more subversive kind in the case of the Prābhākara school than in that of Kumārila. The latter conceive of dharma as a means to an end and the introduction of the mokşa ideal means only the substitution of one end for another. If the old aim was svarga, the attainment of some positive good, the new one is apavarga, the negative one of escape from samsāra. But in the case of the former, which pursued dharma as its own end, the acceptance of the new ideal means deserting its cherished principle of doing duty for its own sake, and going over completely to the side of the Bhättas; for its idea of mokşa, to judge from Salikanātha's
1 Compare NM. Pp. 514 ff; VS. III. iv. 18. • In this connection we may draw attention to the view of some later exponents of the doctrine who, following the teaching of the Gitā, replace the divergent phalas of the several karmas by the single one of 'pleasing God' by their performance (Mimāmsä-nyayaprakāśa, p. 273). This change is quite against the atheistic spirit of the Mimāṁsā and shows how completely the Gitā ideal influenced orthodox thought.
