  It is relevant to begin with Kumārila’s characteristic epistemological doctrine not only because this is widely thought to be among his most characteristic philosophical contributions, but also because Kumārila appeals to the epistemological intuitions elaborated in this doctrine in arguing, as well, for a great many of his other claims; indeed, the commonsense realism reflected in Kumārila’s epistemology represents a useful way into his overall philosophical project, which is shot through with essentially realist commitments. Thus, for example, Kumārila was strongly critical of the doctrine of svasaṃvitti (“self-awareness”), which is arguably foundational for the Buddhists Dignāga and Dharmakīrti; it is particularly insofar as that doctrine figures in a generally representationalist epistemology—one that is to be understood as part of a larger Buddhist case for epistemic and perhaps even metaphysical idealism—that Kumārila will have no truck with the idea, instead affirming that what we are immediately aware of is just the ordinary objects we typically take ourselves to be aware of. Kumārila’s guiding intuition, then, is that we are generally justified in taking awareness as veridically disclosing precisely the kind of world it seems to us to disclose.