Category Archives: Philosophy

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Quick summary of Maṇḍana’s Vidhiviveka, uttarabhāga (siddhānta view), on nitya vs kāmya sacrifices

We concluded today a great workshop on Maṇḍana’s Vidhiviveka and these are my first comments on what we could establish. My deepest gratitude goes to all participants (Akane Saito, Andrew Ollett, Elliot Stern, Kei Kataoka, Lawrence McCrea, Nilanjan Das, Parimal Patil, Patrick Cummins, Wintor Scott and others). (For more on the workshop, read here: https://philosophy.utoronto.ca/event/workshop-maṇḍana-on-ritual-duties/)

Structure:
vv. 2.1–2.6: Maṇḍana’s siddhānta on iṣṭābhyupāyatā (chapter 11 in Elliot Stern’s forthcoming edition)

v. 2.7: summary of chapter 11, opening the new topic (chapter 12)

v. 2.8: yathāśakti provision applies to nitya sacrifices, sarvāṅgopasaṃhāra in kāmya ones (chapter 13)

v. 2.9: time needs to be the distinguishing factor between nitya/namimittika and kāmya rituals. For the former, kāla is included in nimitta, that ensures avaśyakartavyatā (chapter 14)

Summary of Chapters 13–14:
Chapter 13 tries to find a suitable candidate as phala for nitya sacrifices. The Prābhākara opponent insists on akaraṇe pratyavāya, whereas the siddhāntin (or quasi-siddhāntin) prefers pāpakṣaya. A first proposal in this sense, however, is refuted, because it would lead to just vāstava nityatva, and this would not guarantee the application of the yathāśakti provision. This can only be guaranteed by the ought-implies-can metarule and thus by a śābda nityatva, prescribed as such by the Veda. Hence, Maṇḍana wants both levels.

The akaraṇe-pratyavāya alternative is discussed at length. A preliminary possibility saying that akaraṇe there is pratyavāya, and that the sacrifice, being duḥkha, leads in an ānuṣaṅgika way to the production of pāpakṣaya.
This is finally refuted because there is no Vedic text justifying this view (it would be just inflicting whimsical pain to oneself).

At this point, the discussion becomes more technical. The acceptance of the yathāśakti provision implies that one contracts (saṅkoca) the meaning of either the mention of the adhikāra (so that only a samartha adhikārin is meant) or of the various aṅgavidhis. Which one is better? The constant risk to be avoided is that the same view could be applied to nitya and kāmya rituals, thus ending up in their being non-different.

The opponent suggests the application of Kāmsyabhojinyāya and of bādha based on bhūyastva in order to get to the result that the single adhikāraśruti should be contracted and not the many aṅgavidhis. By contrast, Maṇḍana (atha matam, p, 671 in ES’ edition, 17.5.2023) thinks that the aṅgavidhis are restricted, bc otherwise two unwanted consequences would follow (vaicitrya-risk in the prayoga) and because a single śruti is not evidence, since words are used in context (naitat sāram, p. 672).

Thus, this solution is putting much wait on yāvajjīvam-śruti, whereas chapter 14 will put in the context of naimittika sacrifices.

In this chapter, the new risk is adhikārātikrānti and the additional hurdle are naimittika sacrifices, which are not performed every day, but are otherwise identical to the nitya ones. To the atha matam and naitat sāram positions mentioned above something else is added, namely the definition of nimitta as not being a viśeṣaṇa of the adhikārin (this is what the Prābhākara opponent argues for), but just a nimitta. Time (kāla) also belongs to the nimitta in the case of nitya and naimittika sacrifices, although it is an aṅga for kāmya ones and can hence be a distinguishing factor (v. 2.9).

One point we did not have the time to discuss: Vācaspati (on 13.5) discusses a tantra vs prasaṅga approach and concludes that the first one should be preferred. What two things are centrally performed via tantra? Vācaspati clearly says that one is a kāmya and the other one is a nitya ritual (e.g. “ubhayor api kāmyanityayoḥ karmaṇoḥ […] tantram anuṣṭhānam” or “tasmān na kāmye ‘nuṣṭhīyamāne prāsaṅgikatvaṃ nityasya”, p. 660), but what are these referring to? A suggestion: There is a nitya sacrifice corresponding to the śābda nityatva, and a kāmya sacrifice corresponding to the vāstava nityatva and the two are performed at the same time.

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Conference on “Spiritual exercises, self-transformation and liberation in philosophy, theology and religion”

Pawel Odyniec, who is among the foremost experts on Vedānta and on K.C. Bhattacharya, organised a conference that looks extremely thought-provoking on May 22nd–24th. Please read more about the participants (among which Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, James Madaio, Jessica Frazier, Karl-Stephan Bouthilette…) and the program, and how to register at the link below:
https://konferens.ht.lu.se/spiritual-exercises

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Lecturer in Philosophy (including comparative philosophy engaging with more than one tradition)

Lancaster University is hiring a lecturer in philosophy (full time, indefinite position), to start on August the 1st 2023 or as soon as possible thereafter.

The post is “open to all those working in all areas of Philosophy, though we would particularly welcome applicants whose work addresses topics in either (a) feminist philosophy or (b) history of philosophy, including areas of the history of philosophy which consider the contributions of marginalised groups and comparative philosophy that engages with more than one tradition.”

More details: https://hr-jobs.lancs.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx?id=9897&forced=1

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Maṇḍana on sacrificial duties

Maṇḍana’s theory of commands centers around his attempt to reduce them to statements of instrumentality. Commanding to X to do Y would amount to say that Y is the instrument to realise a goal of X. Maṇḍana establishes (in his eyes) this point in the first part of the siddhānta within one of his masterpieces, the Vidhiviveka ‘Discrimination about Commands’. This consists in some verses and a very extended autocommentary thereon. The first part of the Vidhiviveka covers objectors, the second one (the siddhānta) opens with six verses and commentary explaining this view.

However, Maṇḍana then has to harmonize this point with the pre-existing Mīmāṃsā account of duties distinguishing between three sets of sacrifices, namely:

  1. —nitya karman ‘fixed sacrifice’, to be performed regularly (typically each day), no matter what, but where a performance yathāśakti ‘as much as one can’ is acceptable.
  2. —naimittika karman ‘occasional sacrifice’, to be performed whenever the occasion arises (e.g., an eclypse or the birth of a son). As in the above case, yathāśakti performance is acceptable.
  3. -kāmya karman ‘elective sacrifice’, to be performed only if one wants their results and which needs to be performed exactly as prescribed (yathāvidhi or yathānyāya), no relaxing of the norms allowed.

Once a sacrifice has been undertaken, even if it is kāmya, its completion becomes compulsory and the way of such completion remains yathāvidhi in the case of kāmya sacrifices.
How can this difference be kept if all commands are nothing but statements about instrumentality? Would not a statement about instrumentality correspond only to the kāmya category?

Maṇḍana dedicates to this problem the next verses and commentary of his Vidhiviveka, where he examines several possibilities. The main constraints, are, again, keeping the distinction between nitya/naimittika sacrifices on the one hand and kāmya sacrifices on the other hand, as well as the distinction between yathāśakti and yathāvidhi modes of performance. He therefore explores multiple possible understanding of śakti ‘ability’, phala ‘result’ and adhikāra ‘eligibility, especially in conversation with Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā interlocutors insisting on how all sacrifices are compulsory and how the mentions of result found in conjunction with kāmya rituals is only a way to identify the adhikārin ‘eligible person’ for their performance. For instance, which kind of result could make it possible for a command about a nitya karman to lead one to perform the sacrifice every single day? Are there really results that are always desired? And even if such a result could be found, why would one need to keep a distinction in the yathāśakti and yathānyāya performance? If all sacrifices are instruments to realise a certain result, why would some of them need an accurate performance and other not so? The situation is further complicated by the presence of elective sacrifices prescribed to people ‘who desire heaven’ (svargakāma). In which sense are they different from nitya sacrifices, that also lead to heaven?

Unfortunately, the Vidhiviveka is characterised by a terse style, to say the least. Maṇḍana was probably so much into the topic that at times he seems to take important intermediate passages for granted and just leaves the reader wonder. Fortunately, a more generous commentator, Vācaspati, solves most of the doubt and adds further interesting discussions in his Nyāyakaṇikā.
Last, Sanskritists and philosophers of duty have a duty of gratitude to Elliot Stern, who created the first critical edition of the text, including also its previously unpublished commentaries.

Curious to know more? We will discuss chapters 12–14 of the Vidhiviveka in this workshop: https://philosophy.utoronto.ca/event/workshop-maṇḍana-on-ritual-duties/

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Individuality in Vaikuṇṭha

Do the inhabitants of Vaikuṇṭha have desires (or only God’s ones)? Veṅkaṭanātha’s Nyāyasiddhāñjana 174–6 seems to suggest that they can will:

In the same way, Ananta and Garuḍa and the other (permanently liberated souls) and the liberated souls assume this or that form based on their will.

(tathā anantagaruḍādīnāṃ muktānāñ ca icchākṛtatattadrūpam).

But their will, is it an individual will or the same will repeated for each of them? Possibly the latter. Let me explain by elaborating on a different topic, namely that of tedium in heaven.

Christopher M. Brown (Brown 2021) suggests that “our experience of boredom in this life is in fact reflective either of the timeboundedness of the goods that are central to human experience in this life […] or the nature of time as we experience it in this life” (p. 420). This is probably true, which tells us that the experience of superhuman beings in heaven is radically incomparable with ours. Can it be nonetheless desirable?

Brown does not address this concern directly, but tries to make examples of goods that could be experienced in heaven and that we can conceive as being goods, thus implicitly suggesting that heaven can be desirable. For instance, he speaks of “the natural human desire for knowledge of creatures is perfected in the greatest way logically possible” (p. 421). But is knowledge desirable per se? Don’t we prefer to gain knowledge? Don’t we enjoy the process of learning and discovering? Thus, the example of knowledge does not make sense as a case of a pleasure human beings can analogically relate to. Rather, it is a case of participating in God’s nature. And happiness in heaven is “excessive” according to Brown, who is here quoting Thomas Aquinas (who, in turn, seems to be pointing to something similar to what Veṅkaṭanātha had in mind). But if this all applies, people in Vaikuṇṭha or heaven are necessarily very different than people on earth (who had specific desires and limited knowledge). In which sense could they be said to retain their “personality”? And if this is not retained, how desirable can heaven be, for us, who are attached to our personalities? Brown addresses this concern indirectly (pp. 424–425) by suggesting that there can be radical changes in one’s personality while retaining one’s numerical identity with oneself (as in the case of Augustine’s conversion or in the case of people surviving a suicidal attempt and desiring to live). Brown then goes on interpreting Thomas as saying that grace does not destroy human nature, but perfects it, preserving personal identity through the transformation. At the end of the process, human beings (who cooperate with the action of grace) in heaven will be a deified nature and deified rational powers of intellect and will. Brown thinks that ordinary human beings can have a foreshadow of this experience through contemplation, that leads to a sort of timeless experience. A further evidence of this possibility is the life of saints, who seem to have experienced this sort of experiences within their earthly life. In other words, if many of us think that heaven (or Vaikuṇṭha) is unappealing, this might mean just that we are unprepared for it. Fortunately, this unpreparedness can be addressed (through a further rebirth or through purgatory). Should not it be possible to continue improving even in Heaven/Vaikuṇṭha? That would surely be an antidote to boredom, but it appears to clash with the idea of heaven/Vaikuṇṭha being a perfect world, a kingdom of ends.

As for Vaikuṇṭha and the risk of getting boring, possible solutions are:

1. Being in nityakaiṅkārya `perpetual service to God’ is your nature and this is intrinsically appeasing, so, there is no way it can ever get boring.

2. You share sābhogya `same experience’ with God, so there is dynamism implied (since you continue having interesting experiences).

Joining this with Brown’s discussion of tedium, the solution to the problem of boredom can consist in any of the following ones:

a. Ability to help others (including God Himself, as in 1. above)

b. Loss of identity (as implied by 2. above)

c. Gradual transformation of identity (as in Brown)

b. and c. are very relevant for us here. Even if people can retain their numerical identity with their lives on earth, are they still qualitatively distinguishable from each other? Are their thoughts distinguishable? Them not having distinguishable thoughts offers a neat explanation of their being perfect devotees and is completely compatible with omniscience. The risk of tedium would be eliminated through the fact that such perfect beings would have no independent desires and thus no independent feelings, including no boredom.

Summing up, one possibility is (with hypothesis b.) that boredom is impossible because there is no one experiencing it (but is it really something one can aspire to? and, more relevant, this cancels the possibility of service, which is clearly a building block of Vaikuṇṭha according to Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta authors).

A different possibility needs retaining the variety of personalities even among liberated souls: the infinite variety of sensations (as in 1.). Would not they themselves become boring? No, if they are shared with dear people (hence the importance of a community in Vaikuṇṭha) and if one serves (since serving is one’s true destiny and since one is never bored of helping). Hence, again, the importance of a community and hence explained the insistence on other people welcoming one to Vaikuṇṭha. One will oneself soon be part of that group.

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Solipsism in Sanskrit philosophy: Preliminary thoughts—UPDATED

How do Sanskrit philosophers deal with solipsism?

Some Buddhist epistemologists just accepted it, as a necessary consequence of their idealism. The example of Ratnakīrti’s “Rejection of the existence of other continuous sequences [of causes and effects leading to the illusion of a separate mind]” comes to mind. In my opinion, Ratnakīrti has a specially strong argument in favour of his view, namely: The Buddhist epistemological school denies the ultimate mind-independent existence of external objects. But once one accepts that, and thus accepts idealism, how can one safeguard intersubjectivity? If there is no reality other than our representations, how comes we can understand each other? Would it not be much more economical to imagine that there is only one representation?

Others rejected it based on analogy (basically: I am a mind, i.e., a continuous sequence of causes and effects; other people behaving similarly must be a mind too). The first and main example of this reasoning is Dharmakīrti’s “Establishment of the existence of other continuous sequences” (santānāntarasiddhi).

The Pratyabhijñā and the Advaita Vedānta schools are ultimately forms of solipsism. In the former case, there is only Śiva’s mind, and the appearance of other minds is part of his līlā ‘playful activity’. In the latter (at least after Śaṅkara), there is only brahman, and the appearance of other minds is due to māyā. What is the different explanatory power of līlā vs māyā? That māyā’s ontology is hard to explain, whereas once one has committed to the existence of a personal God, with Their likes and dislikes, then līlā is a perfectly acceptable solution. Thus, AV is light on the Absolute’s ontology, but implies a leap of faith as for māyā, whereas the opposite is the case for the Pratyabhijñā school.

What about the realist schools? Some of them established the existence of the self based on aham-pratyaya, i.e., our own perception of ourselves as an ‘I’ (so the Mīmāṃsā school). Some thinkers within Nyāya (like Jayanta) used inference to establish the existence of the self.

Is this enough to establish the existence of other selves?

Yes, in the case of Mīmāṃsā, because other minds seem prima facie to exist and due to svataḥ prāmāṇya (intrinsic validity) such prima facie view should be held unless and until the opposite is proven.

Yes, according to Jayanta, because other selves can be inferred just like the own self is.

Realistic Vedāntic schools will rely on either the Mīmāṃsā or the Nyāya paradigm. Thus, the question at this point will rather be: What is consciousness like, if one subscribes to this or the other school?

Some schools (like Pratyabhijñā, Yoga…) claim that we can have direct access to other minds, through yogipratyakṣa or intellectual intuition. However, yogipratyakṣa is possible only to some exceptional individuals. Moreover, Pratyabhijñā thinkers like Utpaladeva think that even this is not an evidence of the existence of separate other minds.

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Permissions in Dharmaśāstra

Vijñāneśvara’s Mitākṣarā commentary on Yājñvalkya 3 (on expiations), v. 35, explains that even in case of distress a non-Brāhmaṇa cannot take up the profession of a Brāhmaṇa and a Brāhmaṇa cannot take up that of a Śūdra. The commentary on v. 35 also explains that one will need to undergo an expiation ritual (prāyaścitta) because of having undertaken the occupation of another varṇa, once the difficult times are over (see Kumārila’s similar point in text a about expiable permissions). This suggests that

P(taking up the occupation of a kṣatriya or vaiśya varṇa)/being a Brāhmaṇa in distress (and so on for the further varṇas)

is to be understood as an exception to a previous prohibition:

F(perform the occupation of a kṣatriya, vaiśya and śūdra/Brāhmaṇa)

and not of a negative obligation.
It also seems to mean, as Timothy Lubin suggested (Nov 25), that there is no *F(self-harm)/T, since it may happen that taking up the occupation of a Brāhmaṇa would be the only way to avoid dying by starvation, but this still does not lead to a duty to undertake such an occupation.

Moreover, the picture gets more complicated.
In fact, vv. 37–39 explain that

P(taking up the profession of a vaiśya)/(being a Brāhmaṇa in distress)

has some counter-exceptions, namely prohibitions applying to it, e.g.

F(selling weapons)/being a Brāhmaṇa in distress who has taken up the occupation of a vaiśya

Thus, it is possible to have prohibitions within permissions (that are in turn exceptions of other prohibitions)

♦P(x/y) /\ F(z/x)

Then, there is a counter-counter exception, namely:

F(selling/Brāhmaṇa) /\ P(selling/Brāhmaṇa in distress) /\ F(selling sesame/Brāhmaṇa in distress) /\ P (selling sesame in exchange for grain/Brāhmaṇa who can’t perform rites for want of grain).

The commentary quotes Manu 10.91 explaining that if one were to sell sesame in exchange for something else, one would be harshly sanctioned (one will be born again as dog).
v. 41 and commentary explain that the previous permissions are clearly “better not” and that they come with some cost, whereas accepting gifts in case of distress is alright.
So (like in Kumārila, text a above), there are two levels of permissions:

F(selling/Brāhmaṇa)

P1(selling/Brāhmaṇa in distress) —>O(expiation/end of distress) \/ bad karman

P2(accepting gifts/Brāhmaṇa in distress)—>no bad karman

v. 43 (on stealing) follows at that point.
It reads as follows:

bubhukṣitas tryayaṃ sthitvā dhānyam abrāhmaṇād dharet |

pratigṛhya tad ākhyeyam abhiyuktena dharmataḥ ||

“If one has been hungry for three days, he might take some grains from someone who is not a Brāhmaṇa |

If he takes it and is accused, he must say it, according to duty (dharma) ||”

NB: F(stealing)/T is overrun by P(stealing)/not having eaten for three days, provided one is stealing only from a non-Brāhmaṇa (thus presupposing F(stealing from a Brāhmaṇa)/T). The Mitākṣarā commentary
further explains that one can only take enough for one meal and cannot take additional supplies, thus presupposing P(stealing a minimal amount to avoid starvation)/not having eaten for three days.
Now, if one goes on like that for a long time, one might eventually die of starvation (because one is stealing only enough for one meal and only once every three days). v. 44 suggests the solution (the king should take care of one), but this is not a solution one can count on in every case. Hence, v. 43 does not a rule out a situation in which, in order to avoid violating the prohibitions at stake (F(stealing)/T, weakened by P(stealing from a non-Brāhmaṇa/not having eaten for 3 days) and F(stealing from a Brāhmaṇa)/T)) one ends up actually dying.
This further strengthens the point that there is no O(avoid starvation) as the result of F(harm)/T.

The commentary introducing v. 43 states that P(stealing from a non-Brāhmaṇa/distress) only applies to people who have tried all of the above. I am not sure about how to formalise the temporality factor, perhaps something like:

F(selling/Brāhmaṇa)

P1(selling/Brāhmaṇa in distress) /\ distress—>
P1(stealing/Brāhmaṇa in distress)

NB: Kumārila had distinguished between P1 and P2, but by saying that P1 are “general permissions” and P2 specific ones, that is ones explicitly mentioned in text, whereas here P1 can be specifically mentioned and still involve some bad karman.

Appendix: Kumārila, TV ad 1.3.4, text a

[In one case, that of hardship] one does something even without permission, because there is no other way |

[in the other case, that of supererogatory permissions,] one does something else on the strength of a permission: the difference is major ||

And there is a difference between the specific [permission] and the permission (abhyanujñāna) in general (to adopt looser rules in times of hardship) |

[In fact,] the specific [permitted action] is completely free of flaws, the other action has a little (stoka) flaw ||

ekaṃ vināpy anujñānāt kriyate gatyasambhavāt | kriyate ‘nujñayā tv anyad viśeṣaś ca tayor mahāh ||

sāmānyenābhyanujñānād viśeṣaś ca viśiṣyate | viśeṣo ‘tyantanirdoṣaḥ stokadoṣetarakriyā ||

Is the Mitākṣarā just not following Kumārila when it says that even a specific permission can imply bad karman and the need of an expiation? Is Kumārila trying to systematize a complicated series of cases? Or am I missing something altogether?

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Growing ambitions: Philosophy of ritual/deontics and philosophy of religion

What I today call philosophy of ritual comprises a complex set of philosophical approaches seeking to solve questions and problems arising in connection with ritual. Different philosophers of ritual aim at reconstructing rituals in a highly structured, rigorous manner, curbing religious metaphors to the strict discipline of their linguistic analysis. As a result, they examine religious texts according to exegetical rules to extract all meaning and intelligibility from them. Another set of philosophical questions connected with rituals concerns duty. How are duties conveyed? How can one avoid contradictions within texts prescribing duties? I started using deontic logic, as initially developed by G.H. von Wright, to formalise contrary-to-duty situations and think about commands, especially thanks to the collaboration with the amazing Agata Ciabattoni and her brave team at the Theory and Logic Group of the TU in Vienna. Ciabattoni had not heard of logic apart from the Euro-American mathematical logic. Before meeting her, I had not heard, let alone worked on intuitionistic logic nor on fuzzy logic. By joining forces, we could explore new formalisations to make sense of seemingly puzzling texts (see mimamsa.logic.at).

Working with people outside one’s comfort zone is demanding, since one cannot assume any shared research background and needs to explain each element of one’s research. However, exactly this deconstructive operation means that one needs to rethink each step analytically, often being able to identify for the first time problems and resources one had overlooked.

For instance, our ongoing work on permissions in ritual is going to highlight the advantages of the Mīmāṃsā approach in denying the interdefinability of the operators of permission, prescription and prohibition and thus avoiding the ambiguity of the former (which in common linguistic use as well as in much Euro-American deontic logic can mean “permitted, but discouraged”, “permitted and encouraged” as well as “permitted and neutral” and in Euro-American deontic logic even “permitted and prescribed”). By contrast, permissions in Mīmāṃsā are always “rather-not” permissions, whereas what is encouraged though not prescribed is rather covered by different operators.

Within the next weeks, I plan to put the finishing touches and submit to a publisher a first book dedicated to deontics and philosophy of ritual not in the Euro-American or Chinese worlds. The book, entitled Maṇḍana on Commands, aims at providing both scholars of philosophy and of deontics in general a comprehensive access to the thought and work of a key (but unacknowledged) deontic thinker and his attempt to reduce commands to statements about the instrumental value of actions against the background of its philosophical alternatives. I plan to continue working on deontics and philosophy of ritual with an intercultural perspective and with cross-disciplinary collaborations.

Within Philosophy of Religion, I aim primarily at using an intercultural perspective to rethink the categories of “god” and the connected category ofatheism”. Scholars who have not thought critically about the topic, might think that there is only one concept of “god” that is discussed within philosophy, and that this is the omnipotent and omniscient Lord of rational theology, whose existence is necessary and independent of anything They created. But this is not the case in European philosophy (especially in the parts of it which have been more influenced by Jewish philosophy) and it is certainly not so outside of European philosophy. For instance, Tamil and Bengali philosophers of religion will think about and worship a personal and relational God, one for whom existence is not intrinsically necessary, but dependent on His (Her) relation to His (Her) devotees. Similarly, looking at Buddhist authors allows one to see how atheism can be constructed in a religious context, namely as the negation of one (or multiple) concept(s) ofgod”, typically focusing on the negation of mythological deities and the contradictions they entail. I plan to submit a project on new ways to conceptualise atheism from an intercultural perspective and to continue working on the concept of a relational God, deriving my inspiration especially from Medieval Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta theologians like Veṅkaṭanātha.

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Ought entails Can (and Prohibited entails Can) for Kumārila (and Śabara)

Within TV ad 1.3.4, (Mimamsadarsana 1929-34, pp. 192–193), Kumārila discusses a seeming deontic conflict and solves it by appealing to the different responsibilities (adhikāra) of the various addressees. He explains that the prescription to learn the Vedas for 48 years does not conflict (virodhābhāva) with the duty to get married and have children, because it addresses people who suffer of disabilities and who therefore cannot become householders. This is a further evidence of how O(x/a) implies that a is actually able to perform x. If a is unable to perform x, the obligation is not incumbent upon them (the background, ableist, assumption is that a blind or lame person cannot support a family.

Kumārila also discusses the prescription to learn the Veda by heart in order to get svarga (heaven/happiness) and explains it would clash against the ones prescribing complicated sacrifices for the same result, since no one would engage in them, if learning the Veda by heart were enough. Here, we see several principles at work:

1. No prescription can remain idle.
2. Translative (?) property of duties: If x implies z and O(x), then O(z). In fact, performing sacrifices \emph{presupposes} learning the Veda by heart, so that O(sacrifices)—>O(learning Veda by heart).

Because of 1., it is clear that the former prescription necessarily only applies to people who cannot perform the latter. Thus: If there are two seemingly contradictory obligations (both aiming at the same result), that is:

(i) O(x/in order to reach s) and
(ii) O (x3/in order to reach s),
then one needs to postulate for the former an additional condition that states something like “Unless you can perform (ii).

As for the converse, namely that prohibitions imply possibility, Śabara (ŚBh ad 1.2.18) explains that the seeming prohibition “The Fire is not to be kindled on the earth, nor in the sky, nor in heaven” cannot be taken as a prohibition, because fire cannot be kindled in the sky nor in heaven.

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Mapping the territory: Sanskrit cosmopolis, 1500–today

There is a lot to do in the European intellectual history, with, e.g., major theories that await an improved understanding and connections among scholars that have been overseen or understudied. Using a simile, one might say that a lot of the territory between some important peaks (say, the contributions of Hume, Kant, Hegel or Heidegger) is still to be thoroughly investigated.

When one works on the intellectual history of the Sanskrit cosmopolis*, by contrast, one still needs to map the entire territory, whose extension still escapes us. Very few elements of the landscape have been fixated, and might still need to be re-assessed.

What are the mountains, main cities as well as rivers, bridges, routes that we would need to fix on the map? Key authors, key theories, key schools, as well as languages and manners of communication and how they worked (public debates? where? how?).
I mentioned authors before schools because for decades intellectual historians looking at the Sanskrit cosmopolis emphasized, and often overemphasized the role of schools at the expense of the fundamental role of individual thinkers, thus risking to oversee their individual contributions and to flatten historical developments, as if nothing had changed in astronomy or philosophy for centuries. This hermeneutic mistake is due to the fact that while the norm in Europe and North America after Descartes and the Enlightenment has been increasingly to highlight novelty, originality is constantly understated in the Sanskrit cosmopolis. It is not socially acceptable to claim to be novel and original in the Sanskrit world, just like it is not acceptable to be just “continuing a project” in a grant application in Europe or North America.
Still, schools are often the departure point for any investigation, since they give one a first basic understanding of the landscape. How does this exactly work?
For instance, we know that the Vedānta systems were a major player in the intellectual arena, with all other religious and philosophical schools having to face them, in some form of the other. However, it is not at all clear which schools within Vedānta were broadly influential, where within South Asia, and in which languages. Michael Allen, among others, worked extensively on Advaita Vedānta in Hindī sources, but were they read also by Sanskrit authors and did the latter react to them? Were Hindī texts on Vedānta read only in the Gangetic valley or throughout the Indian subcontinent? The same questions should be investigated with regard to the other schools of Vedānta (Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, Śaivādvaita…), the other vernacular languages they interacted with (respectively: Tamil and Maṇipravāḷam, Kannaḍa…), and the regions of the Indian subcontinent they originated in. And this is just about Vedānta schools.
Similarly, we still have to understand which other schools entered into a debate with philosophy and among each other and which interdisciplinary debates took place. Scholars of European intellectual history know how Kepler was influenced by Platonism and how Galileo influenced the development of philosophy. What happened in the Sanskrit cosmopolis?
Dagmar Wujastyk recently focused on the intersection of medicine (āyurveda) alchemy (rasaśāstra) and yoga. Which other disciplines were in a constant dialogue? Who read mathematical and astronomical texts, for instance? It is clear, because many texts themselves often repeat it, that Mīmāṃsā, Nyāya and Vyākaraṇa (hermeneutics, logic and grammar) were considered a sort of basic trivium, to be known by every learned person. But the very exclusion of Vedānta from the trivium (it cannot be considered to be included in “Mīmāṃsā” unless in the Viśiṣṭādvaita self-interpretation) shows that the trivium is only the starting point of one’s instruction and is not at all exhaustive. And we have not even started to look at many disciplines, from music to rhetorics.

One might wonder whether it is not enough to look at reports by today’s or yesterday’s Sanskrit intellectuals themselves in order to know what is worth reading and why. However, as discussed above, such reports would not boast about innovations and main breakthroughs. Sanskrit philosophy (and the same probably applies to Sanskrit mathematics etc.) is primarily commentarial. That is, authors presuppose a basic shared background knowledge and innovate while engaging with it rather than imagining to be pioneers in a new world of ideas. In a commentarial philosophy, innovations are concealed and breakthroughs are present, but not emphasised. Hence, one needs a lot of background knowledge to recognise them.

I would like to map the territory to realise who was studying what, where and how. How can this be done? The main obstacle is the amount of unpublished material, literally millions of manuscripts that still remain to be read, edited, translated and studied (I am relying on David Pingree’s estimate). Editing and translating them all requires a multi-generational effort of hundreds of people. However, a quick survey of them, ideally through an enhanced ORC technology, would enable scholars to figure out which languages were used, which theories and topics were debated, which authors were mentioned, and who was replying to whom.

This approach will remind some readers of the distant reading proposed by Franco Moretti. I am personally a trained philologist and a spokesperson for close reading. However, moving back and forth between the two methods seems to be the most productive methodology if the purpose is mapping an unknown territory. Close reading alone will keep one busy for decades and will not enable one to start the hermeneutic circle through which one’s knowledge of the situation of communication helps one better understanding even the content of the text one is closely focusing on. As hinted at above, this is particularly crucial in the case of a commentarial philosophy, where one needs to be able to master a lot of the author’s background in order to evaluate his contribution.

*As discussed several times elsewhere, I use “Sanskrit philosophy” or “Sanskrit intellectual history” as a short term for “philosophy in a cosmopolis in which Sanskrit was the dominant language of culture and everyone had to come to terms with it”, as with the use of “philosophy in the Islamic world”, that includes also thinkers part of the Islamic world but who were not themselves Muslims.

(The above are just quick notes. Any feedback is welcome!)