  Thus, for example, the tenth-century Nyāya thinker Jayanta Bhaṭṭa—who was himself much influenced by the thought of Kumārila, and who was inclined to cede to Mīmāṃsakas authority in hermeneutical matters—was worried, as a theist, about Kumārila’s epistemological case for the authoritative status of the Vedas. Jayanta thought Kumārila’s defense of the Vedas problematic, however, chiefly insofar as Kumārila’s epistemology dovetails with claims about the eternality of the Vedas, thus making for an essentially atheistic case for the eternality of the Vedas.  So, while Nyāya thinkers like Jayanta characteristically held that authorship of the Vedas is to be attributed to īśvara, “God,” Kumārila’s defense of the eternality of language involves critiques of theism that are, indeed, very much like some characteristically Buddhist critiques of theism. (On this, see Krasser 1999.) But while Kumārila’s epistemological doctrine is clearly meant to dovetail with these other commitments to secure a unique epistemic status for the Vedas, the claimed eternality of language (and the consequent critique of theism) is not itself a point that is advanced by Kumārila’s epistemological case for the immediately justificatory status of contentful cognitions; indeed, that there is nothing intrinsically anti-theistic about his epistemology is suggested by the fact that William Alston (1991) has elaborated a strikingly similar epistemology precisely in order to show specifically theistic practices to be justified. To the extent, then, that Jayanta attacks Kumārila’s epistemology chiefly by pressing the point that it is problematic to suppose there could be authorless texts (as, for example, in his philosophical play Āgamaḍambara; see Dezso 2005, 213–17), it should be recognized that he misses the mark.