and seen as a place at the margins of
civilized society. As the goddess who
dwells in that place, Vindhyavasini is
equally marginal, often seen as a
fierce and dangerous deity who
demands blood sacrifices from her
devotees (bhakta). The mythology of
Vindhyavasini is associated with vari-
ous places in the Vindhyas, but for
centuries, her primary temple has
been in the village of Vindhyachal
near the city of Mirzapur in the state
of Uttar Pradesh, although she is
worshiped in other places in northern
India. One of her charter myths iden-
tifies her as the goddess (in infant
form) exchanged for the infant god
Krishna and killed by Krishna’s
wicked uncle, Kamsa. After taunting
Kamsa that the child he seeks has
already escaped, she flies off and
takes up residence in the Vindhyas.
Since other accounts identify this
goddess as Bhadrakali, this points to
the fluidity of the Hindu pantheon, in
which the renditions differ in the var-
ious accounts, according to the pur-
pose of the writers. For further
information see David R. Kinsley,
Hindu Goddesses, 1986; and Cynthia
Humes, “The Goddess of the
Vindhyas in Banaras,” in Cynthia
Humes and Bradley R. Hertel, Living
Banaras, 1993.
Vipaksha
In Indian philosophy, one of the parts
in the accepted form of an inference
(anumana). The accepted form of an
inference has three parts: an assertion
(pratijna), a reason (hetu), and exam-
ples (drshtanta); each of these three
have their own constituent parts. The
vipaksha is part of the third term, the
examples, and is a negative example
given to show that the claim made in
the initial assertion is one that reflects
the action of particular causes. For
example, in the inference, “there is
fire on the mountain because there is
smoke on the mountain,” the vipak-
sha could be “unlike a lake” since
lakes are places with neither fire nor
smoke, and thus shows that these
conditions are not universally present
(fire is found in mountains, but not in
lakes). By convention, an inference
also had to have a positive example,
the sapaksha, to show that similar
things happened in similar cases (i.e.,
that there were other cases in which
there was both fire and smoke).Viparitakhyati
(“contrary discrimination”) Theory of
error propounded by the Mimamsa
philosopher Kumarila, who lived in the
seventh century C.E. All the theories of
error aim to explain why people make
errors in judgment, such as the stock
example of mistaking the silvery flash of
seashell for a piece of silver.
Like Prabhakara and the Naiya-
yikas, Kumarila believes that the sim-
ple judgments “that object is silvery”
and “silver is silvery” are both true
and indisputable. Kumarila also
agrees with the Naiyayika that the
error comes from a discrimination
that is contrary to reality. His differ-
ence with the Naiyayikas comes with
the latter’s postulation of the inher-
ence-relationship as connecting sub-
jects and predicates (“silver color”
and “silver”). Kumarila’s theory is
identity-and-difference (bhedabhada)
in which all things are what they are
and are not what they are not. Thus
the perception (pratyaksha) of the
shell on the beach would involve its
similarities and differences from sil-
veriness, combined with silver’s simi-
larities and differences from
silveriness. One can combine the sim-
ilarities and get a false judgment, or
the differences and come up with a
true one. As in the Naiyayika theory of
error, the root cause for combining
the similarities rather than the differ-
ences comes from karmic dispositions
stemming from avidya, specifically
the greed for silver that prompts us to
look for such items of value. For fur-
ther information see Bijayananda Kar,Viparitakhyati