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32 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
Vedanta seems to support two distant views. It ascribes the origin of the Vedas to Brahma as its source or cause of source using the term Brahma as neuter denoting the supreme spirit and not as masculine designating the personal creator. It also speaks of the eternity of the Vedas and makes mention of a self-dependent author.
The Brahmins did not remain content with the argument that the Vedas were not made by man. They went much further and contended that the Vedas were not made even by God. This theory is propounded by Jaimini the author of the Purva Mimansa. Jaimini’s arguments in favour of the thesis are so strange that one has to know them in order to realize their strangeness.
It is in the Purva Mimansa — a book of Brahmanic philosophy— that this doctrine of the Vedas being Apaurusheya is propounded. The following extracts from the book will reveal the nature of the argument.
Jaimini the author of the Purva Mimamsa first deals with the argument of the Naiyayikas who assert that the Vedas are made by Parameshwara and states the case made out by the Naiyayikas.
The argument of the Mimansakas is:
“The Veda could not have been uttered by the incorporeal Paramesvara (God), who has no palate or other organs of speech, and therefore cannot be conceived to have pronounced the letters (of which it is composed.). This objection (answers the Naiyayika) is not happy, because, though Paramesvara is by nature incorporeal, he can yet, by way of sport assume a body, in order to show kindness to his devoted worshippers. Consequently, the arguments in favour of the doctrine that the Veda had no personal author are inconclusive.”
He then proceeds to state his arguments in favour of the Doctrine of the Mimansakas—
“I shall now clear up all these difficulties. What is meant by this paurusheyatva (‘derivation from a personal author’) which it is sought to prove? Is it (1) mere procession ( utpannatva ) from a person (purusha) like the procession of the Veda from persons such as ourselves, when we daily utter it? or (2) is it the arrangement— with a view to its manifestation—of knowledge acquired by other modes of proof, in the sense in which persons like ourselves compose a treatise? If the first meaning be intended, there will be no dispute.
If the second sense be meant, I ask whether the Veda is proved (to be authoritative) in virtue (a) of its being founded on inference, or (b) of its being founded on supernatural information ( agama-balat )?