 The Manual of Reason says that statements are either Vedic or secular. It adds that (hearing a) Vedic statement is a pramāṇa, a means of knowing that which is stated, because Vedic statements are originally uttered by God. (The Mīmāṃsakas dispute this. Not believing in God, they say instead that a Vedic statement is a means of knowing precisely because it has no personal origin, and error in testimony is always a result of human error in the source!) Hearing a secular statement is a means of knowing only if the speaker is an ‘authoritative person’ (āpta). An authoritative person is defined as one who speaks the truth (yathārthavaktā). There is an ambiguity here: is an authoritative person one who is speaking the truth with respect to the particular utterance in question, or one who is generally truthful? Another question here is: must the testifiee know that the testifier is an authority in this sense or not?