  Exemplifying, that is, a long-standing tradition that has always already preceded the individuals who find themselves constituted thereby, the Vedas, on the understanding of them commended by Mohanty, “constitute the founding texts for the Hindu world by opening up the horizon … within which the tradition has understood itself and [within which] we who belong to that tradition have understood ourselves.” (ibid.) Mohanty, then, not implausibly finds it possible to see a basically Gadamerian thought reflected in the idea of the Vedas as authorless, and thus to emphasize the character of these as representing a horizon for (rather than a constraint on) ethical thinking:  “The Hindu understanding of dharma as embodied in the imperatives laid down in the [Vedas] preserves the idea of ethics as rooted solidly in that tradition which was founded by those texts, but which those texts have permitted us to reinterpret ever anew.” (ibid.) While this is an interestingly profound characterization of some of the insights driving Kumārila’s project, it is no less reasonable to emphasize, as well, that insofar as Kumārila’s arguments helped secure for Mīmāṃsakas the status of privileged arbiters of this ongoing “reinterpretation,” questions of power and authority remain ineliminable from an understanding of what he was up to.