The Mimansa literature is quite vast and in it are preserved not only the most determined declarations against the possible existence of God, but also bold logical considerations in defence of this declaration. Interestingly enough, some of the major logical considerations against the possible existence of God which we come across in the Mimansa literature are practically the same as found in the writings of the Budhists and Jains, though, as it is well known, from the point of view of Vedic orthodoxy, the Mimansakas were the most determined opponents of the Budhists and Jains. Never the less, despite the mutual differences between the Budhists, Jains, and Mimansakas there evidently existed some kind of free exchange of ideas among these philosophers in so far as they all belonged to the same fraternity of the Indian atheists.

 

At the same time, the special peculiarity of Mimansa atheism must not be overlooked. The Mimansakas felt bothered by a special problem which could not have bothered other Indian atheists, particularly the Budhists and Jains. This followed from their attitude to the Vedas. While the Budhists and Jains were interested in the Vedas only negatively--i.e. only in the sense of rejecting their validity--the Mimansakas were utmost serious about the authoritativeness of the Vedas. And the Vedas, at least as apparently understood, were full of all sorts of gods or devas; these were were Agni, Indra, Mitra, Varuna, etc. How then were the Mimansakas to look at the Vedic Gods? The question was already raised at an early stage of the Mimansa literature, and the answer arrived at was quite amazing.

In the earliest available commentary on the Mimansa-sutra, the Mimansaka Sabara asked:(Sabara on Mimansa sutra ix.1.6-10)"Have the Vedic gods anything to do with the human lot, or to be more specific, with ritual actions and their results?" His question was indeed more radical than this for he wanted to settle the ontological status of the Vedic gods.Do the Vedic Gods have any real or substantive existence? was the question Sabara asked.

Sabara's answer was that in the Vedas, these stood for mere sounds or words i.e. the only existence which the Vedic Gods had was purely verbal. In his considered judgement Indra,Agni,etc. were thus not divine beings at all; they were mere words. If therefore there were a hundred different synonymns for the word agni in the Vedas, these were for Sabara were equivalent to a hundred different Vedic deities, their existence being constituted by the sound value of one of the synonyms. It followed that from the Mimansa standpoint, there was no possibility of any interference by these Vedic gods with the human lot. They had nothing to do with human actions; hence, there was no sense in offering any sacrifice to them.Deprived as they were of any substantive existence, these gods could not accept any offering nor could they feel pleased with these. To try to invoke their grace was thus a senseless act.

It is worth recalling here what i had written a little earlier to the effect that that that some of the later representatives of the Mimansa system felt puzzled by the stark atheism of the philosophy they were expounding. The best known example of this is the Mimansaka Khandadeva (circa 17th century A.D.). After explaining the fundamentals of the Mimansa, he stood aghast as it were by what he had himself written. While trying to be faithful to the spirit of Jaimini, he found it impossible to allow even a scrap of theism in the philosophy he expounded.

Khandadeva, therefore, wanted to atone for this sin and concluded his treatise with a strange prayer (Khandadeva, Bhatta-dipika, iii.53):