Within the Purva Mimamsa vision, karma and dharma are bound together as command and execution, norm and act, text and ritual. Dharma is understood as that which is enjoined by the Veda: the authoritative prescriptions that specify what ought to be done. These injunctions are not abstract moral ideals but concrete ritual duties—sacrifices, offerings, recitations, and observances—whose authority rests solely on Vedic revelation. In this sense, dharma is the Veda-given framework of obligation that defines a life rightly ordered.

Karma, in turn, is the performance of those very Vedic prescriptions. It is the ritual action that actualizes dharma in lived practice: when a sacrificer carries out an enjoined rite, that performance is karma. To live in accordance with dharma, therefore, is precisely to perform the prescribed karmas; neglect of such actions is characterized as adharma, bringing about demerit. The rightness or wrongness of any given action is measured by its conformity to, or deviation from, these Vedic injunctions.

Purva Mimamsa further teaches that correctly performed Vedic karma generates an unseen potency, termed apurva, which serves as the subtle link between ritual performance and its eventual fruits, such as heavenly enjoyment or prosperity. Dharma, as laid down by the Veda, thus functions as the normative order that specifies which karmas are to be performed, while karma serves as the concrete means through which that order is realized and its promised results are set in motion. In this way, the relationship between karma and dharma is not one of two separate domains, but of a single ritual-ethical structure in which Vedic command and ritual action are inseparably intertwined.