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space, constituting two frames of reference on the same ritual event.
53 In the body of the PMS IV, Jaimini uses the distinction to sort out an array of complex textual and practical complications according to their contribution to the finality of the ritual, intrinsically (kratu-artha) or from the performer's perspective (purusa-artha). In various circumstances, one or the other perspective is found to be more useful in helping to adjudicate ambiguities in ritual performance. Both perspectives are organizing markers, and they do not designate different levels of reality; two perspectives on a single event, they are not in competition. |
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When Badarayana identifies knowledge as the human goal and chooses to define this by its distinction from the ritual goal, the distinction therefore need not be taken as sharply disjoining two realms of reality, nor need it imply that the two are entirely independent of one another, or that knowledge definitively supersedes action. Indeed, the very fact that Badarayana frames the debate on the status of liberative knowledge in terms of these two goals strengthens rather than undermines the connection of knowledge and the larger orthodox milieu represented by the ritual goal; the designation of upanisadic knowledge as the human goal affords it a distinct identity, while yet situating it intelligibly within the boundaries of other orthodox goals and perspectives. The identification of knowledge as the human goal does no more than to create a distinct, albeit in Badarayana's view privileged, place for upanisadic knowledge. |
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The rest of UMS III.4 explores the implications of marking knowledge as one in a pair of perspectives; a practical theory of meditation is articulated through a series of admissions and restrictions whereby Advaita, in its by now familiar balancing act, defends the idea that ritual is a de facto prerequisite to the acquisition of knowledge, though in no way a necessary precedent to the event of knowledge. UMS III.4.18-20, which we examined in Chapter 2 in terms of the inscription of the debate over renunciation entirely within the world of the Text, asks how the knowledge of Brahman changes its "performer" and his relation to ritual knowledge and practice: if the knower's position is changed as he moves beyond the boundary of his |
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