[Advaita-l] Apaurusheyatva of Vedas.

[Omkar Deshpande]

<<<I'll need exact words from bhAShyam of vyAsa or any other AchArya on yoga-sUtram to confirm it.>>>

I will type up the explanation of Vachaspati Mishra on Sutra 1.6 (given in Edwin Bryant's book) when I find some time. According to that book, he is one of the commentators who takes the authority of scripture to be dependent on its truths being perceived by someone, ultimately Ishvara's pratyakSha (as opposed to being an authority independent of anyone's pratyakSha). 

<<<Anyway, I'm replying your question(by asking some questions).
Why pratyaxa is svataH-pramANa and others not ?>>>

Let me clarify that I'm not taking a hard stance that "pratyakSha is svataH-pramANa and others are not" is the right epistemology. All I'm saying is that it's the epistemology that broadly speaking speaks to a modern audience, since modern science follows it, and some traditional schools (like Yoga) also appeared to have followed it. Now, even if the position of Yoga school requires some clarification from my side, and let's say we were to ignore it for the moment, what I'm interested in is the question of how to choose between the two epistemologies -- one that considers pratyakSha as svataH-pramANa and others as requiring ultimate support from pratyakSha, and one that considers all to be svataH-pramANa. How do we know that Mimamsakas did not invent the svataH-pramANa formulation just because it would provide them the means to establish the Vedas as authority in debates with their philosophical rivals? 

In general, my question is a very specific version of a more general question: Given a set of N non-identical epistemologies, how does one decide which is the 'right' one? 


Regards,

Omkar