Ślokavārttika

A long verse commentary by Kumārila Bhaṭṭa, the most influential thinker of the Mīmāṃsā school, on the opening section of Śabara's commentary on the Mīmāṃsā Sūtra. That section asks how we can know dharma, our ritual and moral duty, and Kumārila uses it to build a full theory of knowledge. Its best-known thesis is intrinsic validity (svataḥ prāmāṇya): a cognition is to be accepted as true unless something shows it to be faulty, so there is no need to prove each belief before trusting it. On this basis he argues that the Veda, being eternal and authorless (apauruṣeya), is free of the defects that undermine human testimony, and is the sole source of knowledge of dharma. Along the way he examines perception, inference, comparison, presumption and absence as means of knowledge, defends the eternity of words and their link to meaning, argues for an enduring self, and attacks Buddhist doctrines, including idealism, the denial of a lasting self and the claim that the Buddha was omniscient.

It is the classic defence of trusting our cognitions by default, and the strongest Brahmanical case for scriptural authority, argued with care against Buddhist and Nyāya rivals.