But prama has not the same meaning in Vedanta
as in Mima@msa. There as we remember prama meant the
knowledge which goaded one to practical action and as such
all knowledge was prama, until practical experience showed the
course of action in accordance with which it was found to be
contradicted. In Vedanta however there is no reference to action,
but prama means only uncontradicted cognition. To the definition
of self-validity as given by Mima@msa Vedanta adds another
objective qualification, that such knowledge can have svata@h-prama@nya
as is not vitiated by the presence of any do@sa (cause
of error, such as defect of senses or the like). Vedanta of course
does not think like Nyaya that positive conditions (e.g. correspondence,
etc.) are necessary for the validity of knowledge,
nor does it divest knowledge of all qualifications like the
Mima@msists, for whom all knowledge is self-valid as such. It
adopts a middle course and holds that absence of do@sa is a necessary
condition for the self-validity of knowledge. It is clear that
this is a compromise, for whenever an external condition has to
be admitted, the knowledge cannot be regarded as self-valid,
but Vedanta says that as it requires only a negative condition
for the absence of do@sa, the objection does not apply to it, and it
holds that if it depended on the presence of any positive condition
for proving the validity of knowledge like the Nyaya,
then only its theory of self-validity would have been damaged.
But since it wants only a negative condition, no blame can be

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[Footnote 1: See _Vedantaparibha@sa_ and _S'ikhama@ni._]

485

attributed to its theory of self-validity. Vedanta was bound to
follow this slippery middle course, for it could not say that the
pure cit reflected in consciousness could require anything else
for establishing its validity, nor could it say that all phenomenal
forms of knowledge were also all valid, for then the world-appearance
would come to be valid; so it held that knowledge
could be regarded as valid only when there was no do@sa
present; thus from the absolute point of view all world-knowledge
was false and had no validity, because there was the
avidya-do@sa, and in the ordinary sphere also that knowledge was
valid in which there was no do@sa. Validity (prama@nya) with
Mima@msa meant the capacity that knowledge has to goad us to
practical action in accordan