Purva-Mimamsa in its Sources c19.s1.14

c19.s1.14

This cannot be true of the words of the Veda. Because in the case of non-Vedic Words, its invalidity or doubtful validity is based upon the generally untrustworthy character of speakers, —which is due to many such causes as wrong information, wrong understanding, incapacity to use the right words, and so on. In the case of the Words of the Veda, on the other hand, as they do not emanate from a Speaker or author, there can be none of these causes to which the falsity of the assertion may be due. In the case of the words of ordinary men, even when we find them providing a reasonably connected sense, there is always a lurking suspicion that there may be some defect in the source from which the speaker has derived the information that he is seeking to convey by means of the words in question; and for this reason we can never be absolutely sure of the validity of the Cognition provided by such words, which, for this reason cannot be regarded as the ‘Means of Right Cognition’, Pramāṇa. Even in cases where ordinary words do afford valid Cognitions, it is not the Words that bring about the Cognitions directly; what occurs is that on hearing the Words, we find that they convey a certain information, and then we proceed to reason that,—‘the speaker is a trustworthy person as not one of the grounds of untrustworthiness—such as greed and the like,—is found in him, hence what he says must be true; hence the information conveyed by his word must be true.’ Thus in these cases, the Words are not the Direct Cause of the valid Cognition, they only indirectly indicate the presence of the Cognition in the Speaker’s mind, in so far as the hearer is concerned, the Words are not the *Means of Valid Cognition, Pramāṇa;*—at any rate, not independently of the Inference that is involved in the process of the Cognition in the Speaker's mind. All such cases involve a clear *inferential process*; such as for instance, as—‘This speaker has a particular Cognition in his mind, because he has pronounced these words (and he is a reliable person).’