The Purva Mimamsa

THE PURVA MIMAMSA The Purva Mimamsa has for its special object the ascertain ment of duty (dharma). It is not a philosophical system, though it refers to philosophical topics incidentally. It believes in the real ity of the world and the individual souls. As it deals with ritual specially, it points out how every act produces its effect sometime or other through the principle of apurva or the link between the act and the result. While the earlier writings do not admit the existence of God, the later ones do.

A chief writer of this school, Kumxrila argues for the theory of self-evidence (svatah pramana) . Truth is its own guarantee. Cognitions are by themselves valid and their validity can be set aside only by the contrary nature of their objects or by the recog nition of discrepancies in their causes. When we are in doubt about the true nature of a thing perceived at a distance or in faint light, we can resolve the doubt by a second cognition obtained under improved conditions. Even in the most difficult cases we can obtain an absolutely true cognition after a series of three or four. Correspondence and coherence theories do not produce validity but only test it.