The sacrifices performed in the Vedic times were calculated to please, by oblations and hymns, different deities (the Fire-god, the Sun-god, the Rain-god and others) either to win some favour or avert some ill.
Though the Mimamsa is a continuation of this Vedic cult, the ceremonial details of the rituals absorb its interest, rather than the gods themselves who gradually recede and fade into mere grammatical datives.
A deity comes to be described not by its moral or intellectual qualities, but as ‘that which is signified, in a sacrificial injunction, by the fourth case-ending’ (the sign of a dative, to which something is given).
In short, a deity is necessary merely as that in whose name an oblation is to be offered at a sacrifice. But the primary object of performing a sacrifice, says an eminent Mlmamsaka, is not worship: it is not to please any deity.
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Nor is it purification of the soul or moral improvement. A ritual is to be performed just because the Vedas command us to perform them.
Some of these riyaals, it is true, are to be performed in order to enjoy Heaven hereafter or to obtain worldly benefits such as rainfall but there are some (e.g nitya and Naimittika karmas) which must be performed just because they are enjoined by the Vedas.
Here the Mimamsa ethics reaches, through ritualism, the highest point of its glory, namely, the conception of duty for duty’s sake.
Like Kant, the mimamsa believes that an obligatory action is to be performed not because it will benefit the performer but because we ought to perform it.
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Like him, again, the Mimamsa believes that though an obligatory duty is not to be done with any interested motive, wet the Universe is so constituted that a person who performs his duty does not ultimately go unrewarded.
The difference is that while for this purpose the Mimamsa postulates in the universe the impersonal moral law of karma, Kant postulates God.
Again, whereas the source of obligation for Kant is the higher self (which commands to the lower, ‘thou oughtest to do what is good’), for the Mimamsa it is the impersonal Vedic authority which categorically enjoins duty.