An Outline of the Religious Literature of India c7.s2.3

c7.s2.3

§ 37. We mention first what is clearly the earliest form of Indian philosophy, although its earliest surviving document cannot be dated earlier than the fourth century after Christ, and although in its inception it was in no sense philosophical It is clear that the Karma Mīmāṃsā in some form came into existence quite early during this period. It is, as will be explained later, a method of Vedic exegesis, dealing primarily with the sacred texts which give injunctions for the sacrifices. Its interest for us at this point is twofold, first because it is to this day the special system of the orthodox twice-born man, and secondly because it retained for many centuries certain features characteristic of the time of its birth, and indeed retains some of them to this day. The Mīmāṃsā reflects the time when the average educated man was frankly polytheistic, and thus atheistic from the point of view of theism or pantheism, when he accepted rebirth and karma but felt no need of release, and when, like the average unreflecting man, he took a realistic view of the world. For the understanding of the developments of this period it is of great importance to realize that this was the state of mind of nearly all educated men¹ in the earlier, and probably of the vast majority in the later, part of the period also.