One of the two major
commentators of Mimamsa philosophy, one of the six schools of Hindu philosophy,
in the seventh century; the other notable commentator was Prabhakara.
The Mimamsa school was particularly concerned with the
investigation and pursuit of dharma ("good deed"), for which
followers felt the Vedas, the earliest Hindu religious books, offered all
required teachings.
As a result, much of Mimamsa thinking is focused with
textual interpretation principles and strategies for uncovering and
interpreting Vedic instructions.
Despite the fact that both Kumarila and Prabhakara were
dedicated to discovering the bounds of dharma through reading the Vedas, there
are significant philosophical differences between them, which are most evident
in their views of mistake.
Prabhakara starts with the assumption that there is a
relatively weak correlation between an object and its characteristics,
comparable to the Nyaya idea of inherence (samavaya).
A good example of this is the association of the color red
with a certain ball, resulting in the ball being referred to as red.
False beliefs are the product of akhyati
("nondiscrimination," according to Prabhakara).
When a person sees two different items with the same
qualities and decides that they are the same, this is what happens.
Kumarila is more in line with the bhedabhada ("identity
and difference") philosophical stance, which asserts that everything has
both identity and distinction with everything else.
Kumarila defines error as viparitakhyati ("contrary
perception"), which occurs when a person incorrectly associates two
objects' similarities rather than their differences.
For example, a person may wrongly assume that a
silvery-colored shell is really a piece of silver because he or she chooses to
concentrate on the similarities rather than the distinctions between the shell
and silver.
People are compelled to make these decisions by karmic
forces, such as silver greed.
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