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PORVA-MIMĀMSA description, is also the seeking of an end, viz. escape from the trials and travails of samsāra.
We shall now briefly touch upon the nature of this new ideal and the discipline laid down for its attainment. Our knowledge of the Nyāya-Vaišeşika conception of bondage and release will be of much use here, for the two doctrines resemble each other in this respect so very much. We may add that almost the same criticism applies to the one ideal as to the other. The self is conceived in the Mimārsā as eternal and omnipresent; but, as a matter of fact, it is conditioned by various adjuncts which are not at all indispensable to it. Its empirical encumbrance is three-fold: To begin with, there is the physical body as limited by which alone it enjoys pain or pleasure, secondly, there are the organs of sense which are the sole means relating it to the outside world; and lastly, there is that world itself so far as it forms the object of the individual's experience. It is this connection with things other than itself that constitutes bondage, and release means separation from them once for all. The Mimāṁsaka refutes the Vedāntic view that the physical world is sublated or transcended in mokşa. Nor does he admit that the relation between the world and the individual self is unreal as the Sankhya-Yoga does. According to him, the world is real and endures in exactly the same form even when a self becomes free, and mokşa means only the realization that the relation of the self to it though real is not necessary. This state is described negatively as excluding all pain and along with it all pleasure also.3 There seem, however, to have been one or more interpreters of Kumārila who maintained that it is a state of bliss or ānanda. It is controverted by Pārthasarathis and a consideration of Kumārila's remarks
PP. Pp. 156-7. This glaring discrepancy can be explained only by supposing that the stress laid upon dharma as the ultimate puruşartha, or the disinclination to bring duty and pleasure into relation with each other, was a characteristic of an earlier phase of the Prābhākara doctrine and that it remains as but a relic in Salikanätha's exposition of it. For evidence in support of the existence of such a phase, see Journal of Oriental Research (Madras) 1930, Pp. 99-108. : SD. PP. 125.
3 SD. PP. 126-7. - Mäna-meyodaya, pp. 87-9. 5 SD. Pp. 127-8. SV. p. 670, st. 107.
