they have come to hold quite divergent views concerning some of the fundamental questions. Thus while the Vedantins look upon the universe as evolved out of an eternal Omniscient Isvara, the Mimamsakas admit no sort of Omniscient Being and regard the universe as having evolved out of atoms of matter acted on by the karma of individuals. Mimamsakas hold that salvation is attained by the works prescribed in the Veda, whereas the Vedantins maintain that all effects of actions being more, or less transient, eternal salvation can be attained by no other means than knowledge, for which an unselfish performance of the works prescribed in the Veda can but prepare the mind by way of purifying it. It is the Mimamsakas of the post-Buddhistic period that have been led to hold views so opposed to the Vedanta; a position which they have had to assume owing to the exigencies of time. They had to establish the authority of the Veda as a scripture against the Buddhist's anathemas, most of which were directed chiefly against the ritualistic portion of the Vedic teaching. To this end the importance of the Vedic ritual has been so much emphasised--as a piece of rhetoric--that it has come to be held as the main point of the teaching. It is held that nothing else is necessary for salvation, and that it is attained by avoiding all prohibited actions, by doing nothing with a selfish motive and thus generating no new

[paragraph continues] Karma necessitating rebirth, and by a strict observance of the obligatory duties which wash away all sins. The denial of the existence of an Omniscient Being is traceable to the Mimamsaka's zeal to abolish the authority of the Buddhistic and Arhata Scriptures looked upon by their followers as the deliverances of Omniscient Beings,--of those who in the natural course of spiritual progress have shaken off the bonds of flesh and attained perfection in knowledge. As against these the Mimamsaka defends the authority of the Veda on the ground that it is eternal and self-existent,--not the production of a mind, not even of the mind of an Omniscient Eternal Isvara, whose very existence he denies. Those passages in the Upanishads which treat of Isvara are explained away by the Mimamsaka as serving, at best, to furnish an imaginary form or forms--having no real objective existence--upon which the soul should contemplate in order to attain to the highest state of Bliss in Moksha.

23. The Vedantin, on the other hand, looks upon the Mimamsa as an enquiry into the ritualistic portion of the Veda treating of the ceremonial observances which every man has to go through before he is qualified to enter on the path of knowledge. But he deprecates against the Mimamsaka regarding the Upanishads as not pointing to the real objective existence of Brahman, the eternal