force, to give an impulse to the systematic working up of the teaching
of the Upanishads also. The followers of the different Vedic sâkhâs no
doubt recognised already at an early period the truth that, while
conflicting statements regarding the details of a sacrifice can be got
over by the assumption of a vikalpa, i.e. an optional proceeding, it is
not so with regard to such topics as the nature of Brahman, the relation
to it of the human soul, the origin of the physical universe, and the
like. Concerning them, one opinion only can be the true one, and it
therefore becomes absolutely incumbent on those, who look on the whole
body of the Upanishads as revealed truth, to demonstrate that their
teaching forms a consistent whole free from all contradictions. In
addition there supervened the external motive that, while the
karmakâ/nd/a of the Veda concerned only the higher castes of
brahmanically constituted society, on which it enjoins certain
sacrificial performances connected with certain rewards, the
j/ñ/ânâkâ/nd/a, as propounding a certain theory of the world, towards
which any reflecting person inside or outside the pale of the orthodox
community could not but take up a definite position, must soon have
become the object of criticism on the part of those who held different
views on religious and philosophic things, and hence stood in need of
systematic defence.

At present there exists a vast literature connected with the two
branches of the Mîmâ/m/sâ. We have, on the one hand, all those works
which constitute the Pûrva Mîmâ/m/sâ-/s/âstra--or as it is often,
shortly but not accurately, termed, the Mîmâ/m/sâ-/s/âstra--and, on the
other hand, all those works which are commonly comprised under the name
Vedânta-/s/âstra. At the head of this extensive literature there stand
two collections of Sûtras (i.e. short aphorisms constituting in their
totality a complete body of doctrine upon some subject), whose reputed