The Mīmāṃsā school of Indian philosophy has at its primary focus the exegesis of Sacred Texts (called Vedas), and more specifically of their prescriptive portions, the Brāhmaṇas. This means that the epistemic content conveyed by the Vedas is, primarily, what has to be done. In order words, the Veda is an epistemic authority only insofar as it conveys a deontic content.
Category Archives: Mīmāṃsā
A new project on Veṅkaṭanātha’s aikaśāstrya
I just received the unofficial (but wonderful) news that the Elise Richter project I submitted to the FWF has been accepted!
You can read the general abstract below:
Anand Venkatkrishnan on Vedānta, bhakti and Mīmāṃsā through the history of the family of Āpadeva and Anantadeva in 16th–17th c. Banaras
When, where and how did bhakti become acceptable within the Indian intellectual élites?
Veṅkaṭanātha’s epistemology, ontology and theology
In the world-view of a fundamental Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta teacher like Vedānta Deśika (1269–1370, aka Veṅkaṭanātha), theology is the center of the system and epistemology and ontology assume their role and significance only through their relationship with this center.
Mīmāṃsā and Grammar
Did Mīmāṃsā influence Indian Grammar? Or did they both develop out of a shared prehistory?
Long-time readers might remember that this is one of my pet topics (see this book). Probably due to the complex technicalities involved, apart from Jim Benson, not many people have been working on this topic, but in the last few days I had the pleasure to get in touch with Sharon Ben-Dor (who worked on paribhāṣās, more on his articles in a future topic) and then to receive the following invitation:
Doing things another way: Bhartṛhari on “substitutes” (pratinidhi)
Time: Friday, 17. October 2014, Beginn: 15:00 c.t.
Place: Institut für Kultur- und Geistesgeschichte Asiens, Seminarraum 1, Apostelgasse 23, 1030 Wien
Speakers: Vincenzo Vergiani and Hugo David (Cambridge)
Enough with the “eternality of sound” in Mimamsa!
F.X. D’Sa Sabdapramanyam in Sabara and Kumarila (Vienna 1980) is one of the very first books on Mimamsa I read and I am thus very grateful to its author. Further, it is a fascinating book, one that —I thought— shows intriguing hypotheses (e.g., that Sabara meant “Significance” by dharma) which cannot be confounded with a scholarly philological enquire in the texts themselves.
How exactly does one seize the meaning of a word? K. Yoshimizu 2011 (and Kataoka forthc.) on Dignāga and Kumārila UPDATED
We all know that for Dignāga the meaning of a word is apoha ‘exclusion’. But how does one seize it and avoid the infinite regress of excluding non-cows because one has understood what “cow” means? Kataoka at the last IABS maintained (if I understood him correctly) that Dignāga did not directly face the problem of how could one seize the absence of non-cows. He also explained that the thesis he attributes to Hattori and Yoshimizu, which makes the apoha depend on the seizing of something positive (e.g., one seizes the exclusion of non-cows because one seizes the exclusion of dewlap, etc.) contradicts the negative nature of apoha, since it indirectly posits positive entities, such as dewlaps. But this leaves the question of how apoha can take place in the worldly experience open.
(Third day at the IABS:) Franco on the datation of Dharmakīrti and some further thoughts on Dharmakīrti, Dignāga, Kumārila
The datation of Dharmakīrti is a topic I am not competent enough to speak about, but I will nonetheless try to summarise other people’s arguments.
The departing point is the traditionally accepted date of Dharmakīrti, namely 600–660, settled by Erich Frauwallner mainly on the basis of the reports of Chinese pilgrims,
K. Yoshimizu on valid inferences in Kumārila (and on the chronology of Kumārila and Dharmakīrti)
All nice things come to an end, and so did the IABS conference. Now, many among you will be heading to Heidelberg for the Dharmakīrti Conference. Although I will not be able to attend, I received from K. Yoshimizu his paper for it, with the assent to discuss it here.
Andrew Ollett has just posted some interesting comments on K. Yoshimizu recent workshop and on the impact of his theories from a linguistic point of view. Andrew especially elaborates on the topic-comment opposition and on the possibility to read along these lines the vidheya–upadeya opposition found in Kumarila.
If you missed the workshop, you can read about it also here.