1. Surendranath Dasgupta, A History of Indian Philosophy, vol.

1, chapter 9
“Mīmāṃ sā Philosophy” (Motilal Banarsidass, 1991, reprint).

- ‘The Nyasa-vais’esika philosophy looked at experience from a purely common sense

point of view and di not work with any such monistic tendency that the ultimate
conceptions of our common sense experience.’ P.367
- ‘It is difficult to say how the sacrificial system of worship grew in India in the
Barhmanas. This system once set up gradually began to develop into a network of
elaborate rituals.’ P.369
- ‘The Mimamsa philosophy asserts that all knowledge expecting the action of
remember (smriti) or memory is valid in itself.’ P.372
- ‘We can only be certain that knowledge has been produced by the perceptual act.’
P.373
- ‘’It is easy to see that this Nyaya objection is based on the supposition that
knowledge is generated by certain objective.’ P.373
- ‘But this theory of knowledge is merely an hypothesis.’ P.374
- ‘Knowledge is not like any other phenomena for it stands above then and interprets
or illumines them all.’ P.374
- ‘The rise of knowledge is never perceived by us to be dependent on it for its
revelation or illumination.’ P.374
- ‘Thus knowledge is not only independent of anything else in its own rise but in its
action as well.’ P.375
- ‘Thus through the invalidity of any knowledge first revealed itself to us it carried with
it the conviction of certainty which goaded us on to work according to its indication.’
P.375
- ‘The soul is external and has no other cause, and it has to be assumed that the
immaterial cause required for the rise of a cognition must inhere in the soul, and
hence must be a quality.’ P.377
- ‘There are two kinds of perception in two stages, the first stage is nirvikalpa and the
second savikalpa.’ P.378
- ‘The perception of the class…of a percept in relation to other things may thus be
regarded in the main as a difference between determinate and indeterminate
perceptions.’ P.379
- ‘All knowledge involved the knower, the known object, and the knowledge at the
same identical moment. All knowledge whether perceptual, inferential or of any kind
must necessarily reveal the self or the knower directly.’ P.382
2. M. Hiriyanna, Outlines of Indian Philosophy (Motilal Banarsidass, 1993)

- ‘The distinguishing feature of this system, as compared with the others so far
considered, in its adherence to the Veda as in itself an infallible authority.’ P.298
- ‘The Mimamsa differs from them all in that it placed the Veda or śruti on a footing
peculiarly its own.’ P.298
- ‘The primary aim of the Mimamsa as a branch of learning may, therefore, be
described as getting back from the expression to the idea behind it.’ P.298
- ‘the Mimamsa attaches greater importance to the Barhmanas than to the Mantras,
which means that it looks upon the Veda as essentially a book of ritual.’ P.299
- ‘The Mimamsa only extends the scope of the inquiry and makes it more systematic.’
P.299
- ‘The main source of authority in regard to this system is Jaimini’s Mimamsa-sutra.’
P.300
- ‘The system of thought itself, however, is much older, references to it being found in
such early works as the Dharma-Sutras and possibly also in the Mahabhasya.’ P.301
- ‘The conception of the ātman is somewhat different in the two schools.’ P.302
- ‘Experience acquaints us daily with many things that change almost constantly, but
yet maintain their identity.’ P.303
- ‘Jnana or knowledge is a mode of the self.’ P.303
- ‘It is quite useful and the Mimamsaka admits that activity may be, and actuall is,
based upon it.’ P.304
- ‘The main object of the Mimamsaka is to establish the authority of the Veda; but he
does not like to do so solely on dogmatic considerations and therefore tries to seek
rational grounds for it.’ P.307
- ‘He contends that his system does not consist merely in delivering settled judgments
(upadesasastra), but is a reasoned inquiry (pariksa-sastra).’ P.307
- ‘The very classification by him of revelation along with perception and inference
under paramana shows it.’ P.307
- ‘The testimony of the Veda is but a particular means of knowing truth; and whatever
value there is in it, the Mimamsaka holds, is due to its being a pramana like
perception or inference.’ P.307
- ‘All knowledge is presumably valid and an explanation is called for only where any
particular knowledge fails to be so.’ P.308
- ‘The cause of invalidity in extraneous circumstance that must have interfered with
the free functioning of this means.’ P.308
- ‘While thus the Mimamsa agrees with the Nyaya-Vaisesika in its view of the invalidity
of knowledge (apramanya), it degrees with it in respect of the view it takes of its
validity (pramanya).’ P.308
- ‘So the doctrine proposes an indirect test.’ P.308
- ‘The Veda here stands for a form of uttered words and it is in this sense that the
Mimamsaka holds it to be self-existent.’ P.309
- ‘He bases his view mainly upon the following considerations.’ P.309
- ‘The relation between a word and its meaning is natural and therefore necessary and
eternal.’ P.309
- ‘We ought not to think that things were there already before they were named.’
P.309
- ‘A varna is an articulate sound.’ P.310
- ‘It is conceived as integral (naravayava) and omnipresent (Sarva-gata) and therefore
also eternal (nitya).’ P.310
- ‘The permanence of the relation between a word and its meaning, even though it be
granted, does not establish the eternity of the Veda.’ P.312
- ‘It merely serves as a negative aid to it by precluding the conclusion which one may
draw at once that whatever is verbal in form must necessarily have had an origin in
time.’ P.312
- ‘The Veda consists of words, and so far it is like any other literary work.’ P.312
- ‘If the permanence of the word and meaning constituted the criterion of eternity, all
literary works, in fact all uttered statements, would alike be eternal.’ P.312
- ‘When the Mimasaka states that the Veda is eternal, it is this permanence of th text
that he means.’ P.312
- ‘He views the Veda as produced by no author – human or divine; and he maintains
that it has been preserved intact during a beginningless periody by being handed
down from teacher to pupil.’ P.312
- ‘Thus the Mimasaka doctrine of the fixity of the Vedic text rests upon a certain view
of language it takes and upon the supposes absence of all reference in long-standing
tradition to its having been composed by one or more authors.’ P.312
- ‘The belied in its present from is therefore nothing more than a dogma.’ P.312
- ‘The truth concealed under this purely scholastic view, therefore, is that the Veda
embodies eternal veritites.’ P.312
- ‘In the case of smritis, as distinguished from the sruti, it is even now held that this
content constituted the truth revealed, though an attempt is made.’ P.313
- ‘Coming now to the Mimamsaka theory of knowledge, we have to note that it is
realistic, both according to Kumaril and Prabhakara; and there is no knowledge
which does not point to a corresponding object outside it.’ P.313
- ‘The one kind of knowledge that does not come under this description is memory.’
P.313
- ‘If all experience by its very nature is valid, it may be asked how error arises at all.’
P.313
- ‘The Mimamasaka is a realist, and his realism has some feature of its own.’ P.323
- ‘he believes in the existence of permanent dravyas which are the substrata of
qualities and are not merely aggergates of fleeting sense data.’ P.323
- ‘the Mimamsa extends the notion of modal transformation to the atman also which
is absolutely static and passive according to the orther doctrine.’ P.323
- ‘The Mimamsaka is also a pluralist and believs that variety is at the root of the
physical universe.’ P.324
- ‘The schools of Kumaril accepts all the inine dravyas known to the yaya-Vaisesika and
its conception of them is more or less the same.’ P.324
- ‘It adds tow more to them.’ P.324
- ‘Time is perceivable, the view being that all perceptual experience, no matter
throught what sense it is acquired, includes a reference to this element.’ P.324
3. Francis X Clooney, “Why the Veda has no author: Language as ritual in Early
Mīmāṃ sā” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, LV/4, pp. 659-684.