and 200 c.e.), a conservative Brahman rejecting the new theisms, had held that
rewards are not given by the gods but accrue from the acts of sacrifice them-
selves (Clooney, 1990). Such arguments raised the question of how the rituals
could bring about future consequences, especially when opposing schools
developed theories of causality. How can causality take place if there is a time
interval between cause and result? The Mimamsakas, defending a primitive
magic conception of rituals against the implicit idealism of symbolic or moral
interpretations, were driven onto the philosophical field in a realist position.
Implicitly they took up the stance of asatkaryavada, shared by Buddhists and
Nyaya-Vaisheshika (in opposition to Samkhya), that effects are separate from,
not inherent in, their causes.^52 Kumarila therefore postulated a soul substance
onto which karmic potentialities accumulated as qualities.
Drawn into philosophical debates, the Mimamsakas developed an elaborate
epistemology and ontology. Here again we see debates over substantive and
ontological issues giving rise to a meta-level of epistemology; treated at first as
a neutral, common property across the factions, in the next step it becomes a
turf for further intellectual divisions in their own right. The early Nyaya
commentator Vatsyayana (400s c.e.) gave as example of the syllogism a proof
that a sound is not eternal, denying the central Mimamsa doctrine. In defense,
the Mimamsakas of Prabhakara and Kumarila’s generation adopted the Nyaya
epistemology, while expanding it to provide tools for their own purposes. The
Nyaya and the Samkhya had accepted three or four pramanas, valid methods
of reasoning: perception, inference via the “syllogism,” verbal testimony, and
in the case of the Nyaya comparison. Kumarila added two more: negation and
postulation. The latter meant postulating unseen entities to cover a gap in what
was actually perceived; a prime example was the stored potency of karmic
action which connects the sacrifice with its fruits.
Having embarked on the path of multiplying metaphysical entities, the
Mimamsakas pushed pluralism to an extreme. The Mimamsa systematiz-
ers Prabhakara, Kumarila, and Mandana adopted their own versions of scho-
lastic category lists, overlapping with many of the standard categories of their
Samkhya and Nyaya-Vaisheshika counterparts. Kumarila’s list has 13 sub-
stances, 14 qualities, 5 types of action, 2 kinds of universal (Raju, 1985:
59–60). Similarity is reified as a substance, since it is qualified by being greater
or lesser.
Kumarila knew the Madhyamika and Yogacara texts well, and was playing
here on Buddhist conceptual turf, especially the central role of negation in
Dignaga and Dharmakirti’s logic (Chattopadhyaya, 1979: 1:62). The major
Mimamsa philosophers emerged in the generation just after Dharmakirti and
appropriated this new intellectual resource for their own purposes. At the
cosmopolitan Nalanda “university,” Bhartrihari, Dignaga, and Dharmakirti
had worked on the central ontological problem, the conceptual contradictions244 • (^) Intellectual Communities: Asian Paths