 The Mīmāṃsā conceives of an unbroken and beginningless Vedic tradition. No man or God can be considered to be the very first teacher of the Veda or the first receiver of it, because the world is beginningless. It is conceivable that, just as at present, there have always been teachers teaching and students studying the Veda. For the Mīmāṃsakas, the Vedas are not words of God. In this view, they seem to accept the Buddhist and the Jain critique of the notion of God. There is no need to assume God. Not only is there no need to assume that God was the author of the Vedas, there is no need to assume a God at all. God is not required as a Creator, for the universe was never created. Nor is God required as the Dispenser of Justice, for karman brings its own fruits. And one does not need God as the author of the Vedas, since they are eternal and uncreated to begin with. The Ṛṣis, Vedic sages, did not compose the Vedas. They merely saw them, and, therefore, the scriptures are free from the taint of mortality implicit in a human origin. The Mīmāṃsā notion of the authority of the authorless Veda also depends upon their epistemic theory, that claims that all received cognitions are intrinsically valid (svataḥ pramāṇa), unless and until they are falsified by subsequent cognitions of higher order.