Kumārila’s Notion of Pauruṣeyavacana

Abstract

In the Mīmāṃsā tradition, man-made statements, in contrast to perception or Vedic injunctions, are not ultimately counted as primary sources of information. Kumārila inherits Śabara’s idea that man-made speech can convey only a speaker’s cognition (vaktṛjñāna) and not the actual object in question. Thus the essential part of Dharmakīrti’s view on speech as being vaktrabhiprāyasūcaka is already found in the Śābarabhāṣya. It is more appropriate to say that Dharmakīrti’s idea of vaktrabhiprāyasūcaka was prefigured by Kumārila or some other Mīmāṃsakas than to say that Dharmakīrti invented it building on Dignāga’s apoha theory.