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Updated: May 21, 2025
The apparatus of means to bring about the results thus being learnt from the text only, no person acquainted with the force of the means of proof will assent to that apparatus, as stated by the text, being set aside and an apurva about which the text says nothing being fancifully assumed. Texts such as 'Vayu is the swiftest god' teach that Vayu and other deities are the bestowers of rewards.
And we, moreover, do not observe that in the case of works having a definite result in this life, there is enjoyment of any special pleasure called apurva, in addition to those advantages which constitute the special result of the work and are enjoyed here below, as e.g. abundance of food or freedom from sickness. Thus there is not any proof of the apurva being a pleasure.
Nor again the Smriti texts enjoining works of either permanent or occasional obligation; for those texts always convey the notion of an apurva only on the basis of an antecedent knowledge of the apurva as intimated by Vedic texts containing terms such as svargakamah.
And as, further, we have no adequate definition of 'karya, it would be inappropriate to define sesha as that which is correlative to karya, and seshin as that which is correlative to sesha. This so-called 'apurva' can therefore be understood only with regard to its capability of bringing about the heavenly world. It is pleasure alone which is agreeable!
And although Vedic works do not bring about their rewards immediately, they may do so mediately, viz. by means of the so-called apurva.
Well, let us then define the apurva as a kind of pleasure of a special nature, called by that name! But what proof, we ask, have you for this? You will, in the first place, admit yourself that you do not directly experience any pleasure springing from consciousness of your apurva, which could in any way be compared to the pleasure caused by the consciousness of the objects of the senses.
Well, let us say then that as authoritative doctrine gives us the notion of an apurva as something beneficial to man, we conclude that it will be enjoyed later on. But, we ask, what is the authoritative doctrine establishing such an apurva beneficial to man? Not, in the first place, ordinary, i.e. non-Vedic doctrine; for such has for its object action only which always is essentially painful.
Nor does the fact that intelligent beings are not capable of direct insight into the unseen principle called 'apurva, or by similar names which resides in the form of a power in sacrifices and other instrumental causes, in any way preclude their being agents in the construction of the world.
When the result of an act does not appear at once, Jaimini teaches that there is all the same produced a supersensuous principle called apûrva, which bears fruit at a later time, and thus a sacrifice leads the offerer to heaven. This theory is really tantamount to placing magic on a philosophic basis.
The arthavada-passages of the Veda also, while glorifying certain pleasurable results of works, as e.g. the heavenly world, do not anywhere exhibit a similar glorification of a pleasure called apurva.
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