wards Brahman, and his pessimism is merely the
feeling that everything which is not wholly and really Brahman is
unsatisfactory. In the later developments of the system, pessimism
almost disappears, for the existence of suffering is not the first
Truth but an illusion: the soul, did it but know it, is Brahman and
Brahman is bliss. So far as the Vedanta has any definite practical
teaching, it does not wholly despise action. Action is indeed inferior
to knowledge and when knowledge is once obtained works are useless
accessories, but the four stages of a Brahman's career, including
household life, are approved in the Vedanta Sutras, though there is a
disposition to say that he who has the necessary religious aptitudes
can adopt the ascetic life at any time. The occupations of this
ascetic life are meditation and absorption or samadhi, the state in
which the meditating soul becomes so completely blended with God on
whom it meditates, that it has no consciousness of its separate
existence.[770]

As indicated above the so-called books of Sruti or Vedic literature
are not consecutive treatises, but rather _responsa prudentium_,
utterances respecting ritual and theology ascribed to poets,
sacrificers and philosophers who were accepted as authorities. When
these works came to be regarded as an orderly revelation, even
orthodoxy could not shut its eyes to their divergences, and a
comprehensive exegesis became necessary to give a conspectus of the
whole body of truth. This investigation of the meaning of the Veda as
a connected whole is called Mimamsa, and is divided into two
branches, the earlier (purva) and the later (uttara). The first is
represented by the Purva-mimamsa-sutras of Jaimini[771] which are
called earlier (purva) not in the chronological sense but because they
deal with rites which come before knowledge, as a preparatory stage.
It is interesting to find that Jaimini was accused of atheism and
defended by Kumarila Bhatta. The defence is probably just, for
Jaimini does not so much deny God as ignore him. But what is truly
extraordinary, though characteristic of much Indian literature about
ritual, is that a work dealing with the general theory of religious
worship should treat the deity as an irrelevant topic. The
Purva-mimamsa discusses ceremonies prescribed by an eternal
self-existing Veda. The reward of sacrifice is not given by God. When
the result of an act does not appear at once, Jaimini teaches that
there i