  Most controversially, Kumārila invoked the epistemic practice of “necessary presumption” in arguing (at great length in the Tantravārttika) for the category of apūrva, which it is hard not to consider a basically ad hoc category meant to account for the efficacy of Vedic sacrificial rites. Apūrva denotes, then, the temporally remote consequences of ritual acts—what it is, in other words, in virtue of which a correctly performed Vedic rite can be judged efficacious, even in the absence of any immediately observed effect of the expected kind. The felt need to posit such an entity follows from Kumārila’s convictions regarding the epistemic claim that is made (at least upon the right kind of person) by Vedic injunctions. Thus, insofar as one can (as Kumārila argued in elaborating the epistemology sketched in §2, above) justifiably hold that Vedic injunctions make contentful claims about matters of ultimate importance, and insofar as the rites enjoined thereby are manifestly temporal events that are yet said to bear on always “yet-to-be-realized” states of affairs, it must be the case that something relates present, temporally occurrent ritual performances to the essentially imperceptible realm of dharma; for otherwise, the Vedic injunctions would be meaningless.