acrifice may be
performed in different ways by members of different Vedic schools, or
even by the followers of one and the same sakha.

The Uttara Mima/m/sa-/s/astra may be supposed to have originated
considerably later than the Purva Mima/m/sa. In the first place, the
texts with which it is concerned doubtless constitute the latest branch
of Vedic literature. And in the second place, the subject-matter of
those texts did not call for a systematical treatment with equal
urgency, as it was in no way connected with practice; the mental
attitude of the authors of the Upanishads, who in their lucubrations on
Brahman and the soul aim at nothing less than at definiteness and
coherence, may have perpetuated itself through many generations without
any great inconvenience resulting therefrom.

But in the long run two causes must have acted with ever-increasing
force, to give an impulse to the systematic working up of the teaching
of the Upanishads also. The followers of the different Vedic sakhas 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
karmaka/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/n/anaka/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 Mima/m/sa. We have, on the one hand, all those works
which constitute the Purva Mima/m/sa-/s/astra--or as it is often,
shortly b