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Ślokavårtika--a study
(iii) Refutation of the idealist critique of perception (Section IV, w. 1-264) We consider these parts one by one.
(i) Introductory (Section III, vv. 1-13) Kumārila begins by emphasising that'on accepting the idealist position all practical dealing taking place in everyday life becomes an impossibility (vv. 1-4). For the things in connection with which this dealing takes place viz. the things existing independently over there in space, are considered by the idealist to be illusory manifestation of some underlying reality supposed to be revealed to certain extra-ordinary personn. ages through some suprasensuous mode of cognition. However, for the fear of sound. ing too much illogical the idealist resorts to a subterfuge which Kumārila thinks it necessary to expose first of all. For, the idealist calls the things in question not unreal (mithyā) but practically real (samvítisatya-a term whose etymology is obscrue but seems to suggest that it means something like 'everyday truth') (v. 5). Kumärila retorts that what is not real is simply unreal and that to call it not by its proper name but by the misleading name 'practically real' is nothing short of pedantic like calling saliva (lālā) not by its proper name but by the high-sounding name 'mouth-born beverage (vaktrasaya)' (vv. 6-81). To make his position souad further plausible the idealist adds that practical enjoyment of benefits is possible in dream-experience just as much as in waking experience-the idea being that all practical dealing ought to be possible even in the absence of the things concerned just as it is possible in the state of dream (v. 11). Kumārila retorts that what a sensible person strives after is not a dreamlike enjoyment of practical benefits but a real enjoyment of them (vv. 12-13). This should give us an inkling into the type of issues that are going to be raised in the course of Kumärila's forchcoming refutation of Buddhist idealism.
(ii) Refutation of the Basic Idealist Inference (Section III, vv. 19-201) As is natural to expect, Kumārila finds fault with the idealist inference in the light of his own theory of inference, a theory which we have found to be deficient in several respects. But whether deficient or not, this theory has to be constantly kept in mind if we are to appreciate the points made by Kumārila in the course of his present refutation. The following is how the inference in question runs: "The cognition of pillar etc. is false, because it is cognition, just like dream-cognition" (v. 23); so here the locus of inference is 'cognition of pillar etc.', the probandum being false. the probans 'being cognition', a corroborative instance of the homologue type 'dream-cognition'. Of this inference Kumärila's refutation proper continues upto v. 128; (after that two rather general though related questions are taken up). Here he begins by reporting how in connection with this inference certain points of elucidation and criticism were offered by Sabara, the author of the earliest available commentary on Mimaṁsāsūtra and how on some of these points he was differently understood by his own different commentators (vv. 24-34). The following are the most important of these points :
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