  Thus, Kumārila argued at length in the Tantravārttika (e.g., 1.3.1, ff.) that traditional literature can be accepted as authoritative just insofar as it exhibits the property of “being rooted in the Vedas” (vedamūlatvam)—even if that means, in some cases, inferring the reality of a no-longer-accessible Vedic text as the basis for retaining manifestly important traditions that do not obviously stem from any extant Vedic text. Chief among the upshots of this is that what Kumārila and other Mīmāṃsakas took to be the basis for the distinctive epistemic status of the Vedas—namely, their being transcendently “impersonal” (apauruṣeya)—was effectively claimed, as well, for whole traditions of learning ostensibly relatable to the Vedas. As Pollock has suggested, “other sorts of Brahmanical intellectual practices seeking to legitimate their truth-claims had perforce to conform to this special model of what counts as knowledge, and so to suppress the evidence of their own historical existence.” (1989, 609; see, as well, Halbfass 1991, passim)