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Introduction
9. Section XVIII demonstrates that a sentence yields meaning not through the instrumentality of its words but through that of the meanings corresponding to those words (the Sanskrit word for 'wordmeaning being 'padartha' which also means an entity).
Similarly, five sections - viz. II, V, VII-IX - deal with those five means of valid cognition which the Kumārilite Mimāṁsakas posit besides verbal testimony; these means are pratyaksa or perception (II), anumāna or inference (V), upamāna or analogy (VII), arthāpatti or implication (VIII), abhāva or absence (IX). Then there remain only four sections - I, III, IV, XVI; of these, section I serves as an introduction to the whole text as is evident from the fact that it deals with the following four topics :
(i) The validity and invalidity of a piece of cognition-are they intrinsic to this cognition or extrinsic to it ?
(ii) Vedas as an authorless composition are alone an outhority concerning religious matters.
(iii) No man can by himself acquire knowledge of things supersensuous in general and religious matters in perticular.
(iv) What constitutes a religious act ? :
of the remaining ones sections III and IV are devoted to a refutation of Buddhist indcalism while section XVI is devoted to demonstrating the existence and nature of soul; both these are pieces of philosophical speculation of considerable importance but viewed in the total prosent contest they are of a somewhat miscellaneous sort
-somewhat comparable to the interesting and important speculations strewn throughout the body of Slokavārtika. (e. g. the refutation of theism in section XV, vv. 43-86, the refutation of momentariness in section XVII vv. 424-41)
It will therefore be advisable to examine the contents of ślokavārtika' under the following four heads :
I Verbal Tetimony II Means of valid cognition other than verbal testimony, III Refutation of Idealism. JV Doctrine of soul.
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