A Hindu Critique of Buddhist Epistemology: Kumārila on Perception

The book situates the Pratyakṣapariccheda as the fourth chapter of Kumārila Bhaṭṭa’s Ślokavārttika, a verse commentary on Śabara’s commentary on the Mīmāṃsāsūtra. It first explains the Mīmāṃsā school as a tradition grounded in Vedic ritual exegesis that gradually developed a sophisticated philosophical defense of the authority of the Veda against Buddhist and Jain challenges. The central issue is whether perception can be a means of knowing Dharma. Kumārila argues that perception depends on present objects and therefore cannot know Dharma, which concerns unseen moral and ritual consequences. From this starting point, the work expands into a broad epistemological debate: the nature of perception, the relation between sense faculty and object, the status of cognition, the distinction between pramāṇa and result, the role of mind, the validity of conceptualized perception, and the relation between perception and other means of knowledge. A major focus is Kumārila’s opposition to Buddhist epistemologists such as Dignāga and Dharmakīrti, who define perception as free from conceptual construction and treat universals as mental constructs rather than real features of the world. Taber’s commentary explains how Kumārila defends conceptualized perception, critiques the Buddhist identification of pramāṇa and phala, rejects the theory that conceptual cognition falsely superimposes words onto objects, and insists that ordinary determinate cognitions such as “this is a cow” can be genuine perceptions rather than errors or memories. Through this structure, the book presents one of the most technically important Hindu critiques of Buddhist epistemology in the classical period.