Abstract: Mimamsa, whose name means
investigation or enquiry, is the darshana most specifically concerned with the
interpretation of the Vedic texts and the defence of their authority as a valid
and indeed supreme source of knowledge about dharma. While the other darshanas
tend to treat the Vedic texts as one source of knowledge among others, to be
evaluated and incorporated according to their own philosophical criteria,
Mimamsa makes the interpretation and application of the Vedic injunctions its
primary philosophical project and the authority of the Vedic texts its central
philosophical thesis. The system developed by Jaimini in the Mimamsa Sutras and
elaborated by Shabara, Kumarila Bhatta, and Prabhakara is the tradition's most
technically sophisticated defence of shabda, testimony, as a pramana, and
specifically of Vedic testimony as self-luminous and authoritative without
requiring any external validation. This article explores the Mimamsa
understanding of dharma and how it is known, the theory of the eternal word and
its relationship to the Vedic texts, the Mimamsa theory of karma and how the
Vedic rituals produce their effects, and what the school's technical
philosophical work contributed to the tradition beyond the specific project of
Vedic interpretation.
Keywords: Mimamsa, Jaimini,
Kumarila Bhatta, Vedic authority, shabda-pramana, dharma, apurvam, eternal
word, ritual, Sanatana Dharma, interpretation
Introduction
There is a problem that confronts
any tradition that bases its authority on a body of scripture: how do you know
the scripture is authoritative? You cannot simply appeal to the scripture
itself, because that would be circular. You cannot simply appeal to the person who
transmitted the scripture, because every person is fallible. You cannot simply
appeal to the tradition that has accepted the scripture, because the
tradition's acceptance needs its own justification. The question of how
scriptural authority is established without circularity is one of the most
demanding in all of religious philosophy, and Mimamsa is the darshana that
takes this question most seriously and develops the most technically
sophisticated response to it.
Jaimini's Mimamsa Sutras, one of
the oldest and most extensive sutra texts in the tradition, is primarily
concerned not with metaphysics in the broad sense but with the specific
question of how Vedic injunctions are to be interpreted and how the dharma they
prescribe is to be correctly understood and performed. The philosophical
apparatus the tradition builds in the service of this interpretive project,
including the theory of the eternal word, the theory of cognition and its
self-luminosity, and the theory of the apurvam or unseen potency that connects
ritual performance with its eventual results, turned out to be philosophically
productive far beyond the specific context of Vedic interpretation.
Dharma as the
Subject of Mimamsa
The Mimamsa Sutras open with a
question about dharma: athato dharma jijnyasa, now therefore an enquiry into
dharma. This opening parallels the Brahma Sutras' athato brahma jijnyasa, now
therefore an enquiry into Brahman, and the parallel is deliberate: just as the
Brahma Sutras take Brahman as their subject, the Mimamsa Sutras take dharma as
theirs. Dharma, in the Mimamsa understanding, is not a general principle of
righteous conduct but specifically the set of obligatory actions prescribed by
the Vedic injunctions and the optional actions recommended by them, along with
the prohibitions against certain actions.
अथातो धर्मजिज्ञासा। चोदनालक्षणोऽर्थो धर्मः।
Athato
dharma-jijnyasa. Chodana-lakshano 'rtho dharmah.
(Now, therefore,
an enquiry into dharma. Dharma is a beneficial thing characterised by an
injunction.)
Mimamsa Sutras,
1.1.1-2 (Jaimini)
Chodana-lakshana: characterised by
injunction. Dharma in the Mimamsa sense is precisely what the Vedic injunctions
prescribe and prohibit. It cannot be known by perception, because dharma is a
feature of actions and their results that transcends what the senses can
directly apprehend. It cannot be known by inference, because the causal
connections between ritual actions and their eventual results are not the kind
of regularities that the ordinary inferential process can establish. It is
known only through the Vedic texts, which are the only valid source of
knowledge about dharma. This is the Mimamsa's central epistemological thesis:
for the specific domain of dharma, the Vedic injunctions are the necessary and
sufficient source of knowledge.
The Eternal Word:
Shabda as Eternal and Self-Luminous
The most philosophically bold
thesis of the Mimamsa system is the claim that the Vedic texts are not the
composition of any person, human or divine, but are the expression of an
eternal linguistic reality, the shabda (word) that is a beginningless and
uncreated feature of the universe. The Vedic texts were not composed by Brahma
or any other deity at the beginning of creation. They existed before creation
and will exist after its dissolution. They are transmitted from teacher to
student across each cosmic cycle, not created anew in each cycle.
This theory of the eternal word
(nitya-shabda) is the Mimamsa's foundational answer to the question of Vedic
authority. If the Vedic texts were composed by a person, their authority would
depend on the reliability of that person, and since no person is infallible,
the texts' authority would always be subject to doubt. But if the Vedic texts
are the expression of an eternal linguistic reality that is not the product of
any person's composition, then the question of the author's fallibility does
not arise. The texts are authoritative not because of who composed them but
because they are part of the eternal structure of reality itself.
नित्यः शब्दः। संस्काराच्च।
Nityah shabdah.
Samskarac ca.
(The word is
eternal. And (it is known) through the impressions (it leaves).)
Mimamsa Sutras
(Jaimini, on the eternality of word)
The eternality of the word is
defended against the obvious objection that words are uttered and heard at
specific moments and therefore cannot be eternal. The Mimamsa response is a
distinction between the word as a universal (the type) and the specific
utterance as a particular (the token). When a word is uttered, what is produced
is not the word itself but a manifestation of the eternal word, a specific
occurrence of something that exists eternally as a universal. The Sanskrit
letters that constitute the Vedic texts are eternal; the specific physical
sounds that manifest them in any given recitation are temporary. This
distinction between the eternal universal and the temporary particular is one
of the tradition's most philosophically interesting contributions to the theory
of language.
Apurvam: The
Unseen Potency That Connects Ritual and Result
One of the most technically
distinctive elements of the Mimamsa system is the concept of apurvam, the
unseen or unprecedented. The problem Mimamsa faces is this: the Vedic rituals
typically produce their results only in the future, sometimes in a distant
future lifetime. How can the ritual performance at one moment be causally
connected to a result that occurs at a very different moment? The ordinary
causal model, in which causes immediately precede their effects, cannot account
for this temporal gap.
The Mimamsa response is the
apurvam: the performance of a Vedic ritual produces, as an immediate result, an
unseen potency or power that is carried forward by the performer and that
eventually produces the promised result when the appropriate conditions are
met. The apurvam is the causal bridge between the ritual performance and its
result, the permanent potency that persists through time and that is neither
the ritual performance itself nor the eventual result but the causal link
between them. This theory of the apurvam became one of the most discussed
concepts in the tradition's philosophical and legal literature, with
implications reaching into the theory of karma and the understanding of how
past actions continue to exert influence in the present.
Conclusion
Mimamsa's contribution to Sanatana
Dharma goes far beyond its specific project of interpreting Vedic injunctions.
Its theory of the eternal word influenced every subsequent discussion of
language and meaning in the tradition. Its theory of the self-luminosity of cognition,
the claim that cognition validates itself rather than requiring external
validation, became a central topic of epistemological debate across all the
schools. Its theory of the apurvam shaped the tradition's understanding of how
karma works. And its insistence that a complete account of dharma requires
engagement with the specific texts that prescribe it, rather than merely with
abstract philosophical principles, kept the tradition grounded in its textual
inheritance throughout the long period of philosophical development.
The Mimamsa spirit, the spirit of
careful, technically rigorous investigation of how specific authoritative
sources are to be correctly understood and applied, is not merely a historical
phenomenon. It is the ongoing practice of every person in the tradition who
takes seriously the question of how the tradition's most important texts are to
be read. The answer may not always be what Jaimini and Kumarila provided. But
the question they insisted on asking, how do we know what dharma requires, and
how do the texts that tell us this require to be correctly read, is one that
every generation must answer for itself.
References and
Suggested Reading
Mimamsa Sutras of Jaimini (with
commentary by Shabara)
Kumarila Bhatta, Shlokavartika
Prabhakara, Brhati
S. Radhakrishnan, Indian
Philosophy, Volume 2 (1927)
P.V. Kane, History of
Dharmashastra, Volume 5
Karl Potter, Encyclopedia of Indian
Philosophies, Volume 16 (Mimamsa)
