Category Archives: Mīmāṃsā

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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!)

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“dadhi and dadhy are two different words”

The case of combination variants like dadhi and dadhy is used by Nyāya authors as an evidence of the fact that words are produced and modified. Mīmāṃsā authors, who think that language is without beginning, need to respond to that and explain therefore that dadhy is not a modification of dadhi, but an alternative word, and both are used in specific phonetic contexts.

Veṅkaṭanātha in his commentary on PMS 1.1.16 elaborates thereon and explains that they are described as archetype and ectype of each other for pedagogical reasons only (in order not to further multiply the number of words to be learnt). At this point, he faces two very different objections.

The first opponent says that the archetype-ectype relation could be reverted according to a different grammatical analysis. This probably means that dadhy could be considered as the archetype and dadhi as the ectype. Veṅkaṭanātha answers that one should choose the grammatical analysis based on its pedagogical merits, and the one suggested by the opponent is not pedagogically easier.

The other opponent says that the ectype-archetype relation is real and based on the similarity between the two. The “similarity” is not further elaborated upon, but we can guess something more about it through Veṅkaṭanātha’s reply. Veṅkaṭanātha answers that if similarity were the ground for real archetype-ectype connections, then there would be no way not to avoid over- and under-extensions. On the one hand, one could over-extend it to other cases of similarities, like yogurt (dadhi) and jasmine flowers, that are similar insofar as they are both white, although they are not considered to be archetype and ectype of each other. On the other hand, cow-dung and beetles are dissimilar, but are considered one the ectype of the other (beetles are believed to be a transformation of cow-dung).

Now, my problem regards a terminological choice. The first opponent says: vyākaraṇāntareṇa prakṛtivikṛtivaiparītyam. In his answer to the second opponent, Veṅkaṭanātha says na ca sādṛśyāt prakṛtivikṛtibhāvaḥ śaṅkhyaḥ, vaiparītyasyāpi prasaṅgāt. However, vaiparītya in the first case seems to be the opposite of what should be the case (the inversion of dadhi and dadhy as archetype and ectype). By contrast, in the second case vaiparītya seems to indicate just a different set of consequences. Comments welcome!

(Cross-posted on the indianphilosophyblog.com)

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Reconstructing Viśiṣṭādvaitavedānta: Veṅkaṭanātha’s contribution

The book on Veṅkaṭanātha I am working on is an attempt of doing history of philosophy in the Sanskrit context, given that no agreed canon, chronology, list of main figures or main questions has been established for the history of Sanskrit philosophy. Therefore, in the Sanskrit context, doing history of philosophy does not amount to reconstruct some aspects within an established picture, but rather to understand what is the picture altogether. This also means that it is impossible or counter-productive to do history of philosophy in just an antiquarian way in the Sanskrit context.
The book also takes on the challenge of talking about Sanskrit philosophy without reducing it to ahistorical “schools” which are depicted as unchanging through time, so that while talking of Nyāya one can mix 5 c. CE sources with 11 c. ones. In contrast to this approach, the book focuses on the role of individual philosophers within such schools.

Accordingly, the book reconstructs the intellectual figure of Veṅkaṭanātha and his philosophical and theological contribution to what we now call “Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta”. Its main thesis is that Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta as we know it now is mostly a product of Veṅkaṭanātha’s brilliant mind. He connected various texts and theories into a harmonious whole, so that readers and practitioners looking at the time before Veṅkaṭanātha now recognise them as pieces of a puzzle. Once Veṅkaṭanātha’s contribution is in place it is in fact easy to look back at authors before him and recognise them as pieces of the same jigsaw puzzle. However, it is only due to Veṅkaṭanātha that the entire jigsaw puzzle exists and the various texts and ideas could have remained disconnected, or could have led to different developments without him. The book analyses Veṅkaṭanātha’s contribution in shaping the school, a con- tribution that goes so deep that it is hard to imagine Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta through a different lens. Veṅkaṭanātha’s synthesis was not, or not just, the result of a juxtaposition, but itself a philosophical enterprise. Veṅkaṭanātha re-interpreted a large amount of texts and ideas connecting them in a higher-order theory. In this sense, he is a philosopher doing history of philosophy as his primary methodological tool.

The book investigates this synthesis, its range and its theoretical foundations. In this way, it also attempts to reframe the usual understanding of Veṅkaṭanātha’s impact on Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, shifting him from the position of a learned successor of Rāmānuja to that of a builder of a new system, with a different scope (ranging well beyond Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta and incorporating much more into it) and possibly with a different basis. Consequently, this book deals with philosophical themes in connection with their intellectual development.

Among the tools used by Veṅkaṭanātha in crafting his synthesis, of particular interest is his emphasis on the unity of the system holding between Vedānta and another school, called Mīmāṃsā. This is a school focusing on the exegesis of the Vedas and therefore on epistemology, deontics, philosophy of language and hermeneutics. Veṅkaṭanātha borrowed from it the tools to reconcile sacred texts seemingly mutually contradictory, as well as a well- developed dynamic ontology and account of subjectivity. However, the Mīmāṃsā school was also atheistic and considered the Vedas to be only enjoying a deontic authority, not an epistemic one. Both claims (especially the first one) contradict basic tenets of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta. Therefore, in crafting a single system out of Mīmāṃsā and Vedānta Veṅkaṭanātha needed to find a way not to deny these claims while at the same time transcending them. Last, some readers not too familiar with Sanskrit philosophy might find a lot of topics Veṅkaṭanātha deals with “non-philosophical” or at least “non-philosophical enough”. For instance, why does he spend so much time on the injunction to learn the Vedas by heart? As an interpreter, I might have just used the debate in order to extract from it what is relevant for what is recognised today as “philosophy of action”, e.g.: Can someone be motivated to undertake an action whose results will only take place after years ? Does this even count as an action? What at all counts as motivation with regard to a course of action involving multiple years? Can a cost-benefit analysis still work in such cases? Which concept of subjectivity is needed for complex actions extending over multiple years? Alternatively, I might have just depicted the relevance of the debate in the historical setting in which it took place. In general, I gave hints going in both directions, but I primarily tried to reconstruct the debate in its own terms, because a global approach to philosophy means being open not just to new answers to old questions and to new questions within known fields, but also to altogether new fields of investigation. The unitary Mīmāṃsā system is in this sense a treasure house of ideas leading to a philosophy of exegesis and a philosophy of ritual.

Comments and criticisms, as usual, more than welcome!

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Medhātithi on corporeal punishment

Medhātithi discusses corporeal punishments whenever Manu does, but in two different ways: At times (e.g., in his commentary on MDhŚā 9.248) he just repeats what Manu says, without adding further elaborations and without attempting a general argument about the overall consistency of the punishments suggested. At other times, he allows the jurist and philosopher of law within himself to talk and gives more details about the purpose of the punishments. These are the passages I will focus on in this post.

1. Terminology: One of the things not completely clear in MDhŚā (and consequently in Medhātithi’s commentary thereon) is what kind of corporeal punishment are meant by māraṇa ‘imposing death’, hiṃsā ‘violence’ and vadha ‘killing’. All could just mean ‘death penalty’ (and hiṃsā and māraṇa are used in the commentary on MDh 8.318 as if they were synonyms). However, in other cases other forms of corporeal punishment (śārīra daṇḍa) are mentioned, e.g., aṅkana ‘branding’ (so Medhātithi on 9.236). Could these be included within maraṇa, vadha and hiṃsā as well? It will be evident in the following that Medhātithi takes advantage of each vagueness in MDhŚā in his efforts to make the text consistent.

Medhātithi on 9.249 comments on a passage speaking of vadha, but ex- plicitly broadens the concept, so as to encompass other types of punishment apart from death penalty. It is noteworthy that he mentions two topics that will be highlighted also in section 3.3, namely holding back crimes as a purpose of punishment, and the distinction between visible and invisible purposes:

“This mention [in the MDhŚā] of vadha is for the sake of summarising (upasaṃhṛ-) suppressive [punishments] (nigraha). Therefore, according to the law code (yathāśruti) this vadha can occur through various manners. In this context, given that the mention of vadha [in the MDhŚā] is meant for the sake of perceptible purposes, it does not need to be necessarily a killing. Such being the case, there is no flaw if [the punishment] is realised also through other means, e.g. detention (bandhana).”

(nigrahopasaṃhārārthas tv ayaṃ vadhopadeśaḥ. ato yathāśruti citravadhopāyaiḥ kartavyaḥ. […] tatra dṛṣṭaprayojanatvād upadeśasya na niyato vadhaḥ. evaṃ ca saty upāyāntareṇāpi bandhanādinā ’viniyacchato’ na doṣaḥ.)

2. Multiple purposes for corporeal punishments: In the commentary ad MDh 8.324 Medhātithi discusses the different pun- ishments (ranging from a fine to beating and to death) for stealing, as pro- portioned to the moment in which the stealing has been committed and to the purpose which could have been fulfilled by the stolen item. For instance, stealing war animals during a war encounters a more severe penalty than stealing them at a normal time. Similarly, stealing a rare medicine when it would have been needed by a certain patient encounters a severe punishment, whereas stealing the same medicine when no one needs it receives a smaller punishment. The mention of paying a fine vs death as punishment in the various circumstances in which one could steal a sword strongly suggests that fines are considered the smaller punishment.

3. Corporeal punishment vs. fines: Notwithstanding what has been seen in section 2, the choice between fines and corporeal punishment is not just driven by the severity of the crime.

The passage I will analyse here is the commentary ad MDh 8.318. Looking back at the Mīmāṃsā 6-fold dialectical scheme above, the topic here is corporeal punishment, even though it remains implicit. The doubt is also implicit, but it can be reconstructed as: Does corporeal punishment have an invisible purpose? A further implicit background assumption only became clear to me at the end of my analysis: There are either monetary punishments or corporeal ones.

Thus:

• topic: corporeal punishment [implicit]
• doubt: Does corporeal punishment have an invisible purpose? [implicit]

1st speaker (Medhātithi): punishment in the form of fines is useful to the king (implicit: because he earns money), [hence] corporeal punishment must be useful to the person who undergoes it.

2nd speaker (Obj): No, it is needed for the sake of protecting other people from crimes.

(Medhātithi): Why should protection not be possible without hurting?

(Obj): Without the hurt, the person would repeat the act

(Medhātithi): This could be achieved also by reprimanding them etc.

(Obj): By seeing them punished, others would desist.

(Medhātithi): The suffering could be brought about even by fines.

(Medhātithi): Moreover, even though criminals are punished, thousands of people are found to do the same act again and again!

Conclusion: Corporeal punishment purifies the person who undergoes it by creating an invisible force, so that they can be admitted to heaven like innocent people, as said by Manu. What follows at this point seems a redundant addition, since it seems to come after the conclusion:

  • 1. There are restrictions concerning the cutting off of limbs…
  • 2. Also prescriptions such as the one about the elephant, etc.
  • 3. Therefore, it is established that one is liberated from one’s bad karman only once there is corporeal punishment,
  • 4. And analogously, branding (aṅkana) will be prescribed in the case of major offenders, to whom everything has been confiscated, and who are punished by entering into water, so that people avoid getting in touch with them. The figure below summarises the whole discussion.

4. Unspoken strategies: Medhātithi does not feel the need to spell out strategies and premisses he is mostly reusing from Mīmāṃsā.

The first unspoken premiss of Medhātithi is: Never question the juridical corpus one is commenting upon, just try to make sense of it (as Mīmāṃsā authors do with the Veda). This means that Medhātithi cannot conclude that corporeal punishments should be avoided. He can discuss the why, not the whether. Correspondingly, the juridical corpus can be interpreted, not refuted.

The second unspoken assumption is: Every action needs a purpose (cf. prayojanam anuddiśya na mando’pi pravartate, Kumārila). This leads to the conclusion that punishment needs a purpose.

A third unspoken assumption is that there is a distinction between visible and invisible purposes (dṛṣṭa and adṛṣṭa in Mīmāṃsā terminology).

This is accompanied by the forth unspoken assumption, namely, the preference for visible purposes whenever possible, and by the fifth one, namely that only one purpose is possible (ekārthatā), both of which borrowed from Mīmāṃsā. Therefore, Medhātithi only concludes that corporeal punishment has an invisible purpose once he has ruled out possible visible ones.

A sixth unspoken assumption is that ceteris paribus, we should not harm any living being, because of the Vedic prohibition “One should not harm any living being” (na hiṃsyāt sarvā bhūtāni), largely discussed in Mīmāṃsā.

5. Corporeal punishment and adultery: As seen above, corporeal punishments are not a deterrent to crime (although they can have other purposes). However, Medhātithi ad 8.359 seems to admit of corporeal punishments as deterrent, while discussing punishments for adultery. The passage reads as follows:

“If by [minor things] like talking together there were only a minor penalty, then people would keep acting. Then, inflamed by the deity of love, overpowered by another conversation with another man’s wife, and attracted by the arrows of love, they would consider the king’s correction as negligible and disregard [even] their bodies’ sustenance.

By contrast, if by the first undertaking they were caught, it would be possible to drive them away, given that their desire has been interrupted (aprabandhavṛtti). Hence, it is correct to have major penalties even for people just whispering to other people’s wives.”

Is this passage in sheer contradiction with the previous one? Should not fines be enough? This question brings us back to the kind of Mīmāṃsā Medhātithi is following, which is possibly a Maṇḍana-flavoured Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā in which the addressee of a command can evaluate costs and benefits (for instance, of fines and theft). However, in the case of love and lust, people are unable to calculate costs and benefits. Hence, the only way to protect women is by eliminating their potential seducers. Thus, corporeal punishment in those cases might just aim at making adultery impossible by removing the potential seducer.

6. Conclusions: Punishments are prescribed by Manu on different bases. Medhātithi partly tries to systematise Manu’s lore and in several cases discusses a multifaceted structure of punishments. For instance, in the commentary on MDhŚā 8.334 Medhātithi specifies that Manu’s reference to the cutting of a limb as a punishment for theft only regards “one who is repeatedly addicted to stealing” (transl. by G. Jhā) after they have been repeatedly fined. This is relevant as a harmonising comment, because the previous verses of Manu had mentioned fines.

According to Medhātithi, punishments can be nuanced based on multiple factors. The first and main factor is the purpose to be achieved by the punishment: discouraging crimes (e.g., stealing weapons during war is severely punished in the commentary on MDhŚā 8.324), making crimes literally impossible (as in the case of adultery in the commentary on 8.359) allowing the king to increase their financial resources (commentary on 8.318), warning other people that they are dealing with a convicted criminal (commentary on 9.236), purifying the criminal (commentary on 8.318). This means that although fines are in principle a smaller punishment than corporeal punishments, they can be the preferred option depending on the purpose to be achieved with the punishment.

For some random crimes, such as stealing in normal circumstances, Medhātithi does not aim at eradicating them completely, hence fines are the best strategy (they discourage crimes while increasing the king’s finances). Other crimes (such as adultery, stealing medicines from sick people or stealing a weapon from a person who is directly confronted by an armed enemy) are seen as more threatening and therefore need to be actively discouraged or literally made impossible with extreme measures.

The broadest systematising effort by Medhātithi with regard to punishments seems to occur in his commentary on 8.318, where he lists all punish- ments as being either for the benefit of the punisher (fines, benefitting the king) or for the benefit of the punished (corporeal punishments, purifying the criminal).

Does the reconstruction above convince you? Do you notice other strategies?

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Prescriptions in Kumārila, Uṃveka, Maṇḍana

Maṇḍana’s thesis of iṣṭasādhanatā is an answer to the problem of how to identify the core of a prescription. What makes people undertake actions? Kumārila’s śabdabhāvanā (‘linguistic urge’) theory and Prabhākara’s kāryavāda (‘theory about duty [being the motivator]’) had already offered their answers.

Kumārila’s theory had two pillars:

  • 1. a theory of rational behaviour being always goal-oriented,
  • 2. a strong hermeneutic basis linked to the analysis of prescriptive language.

In the 2. analysis, exhortative verbal endings are analysed as entailing a verbal part (tiṅ) and an exhortative part (liṅ). The former express the action (bhāvanā), the latter express the injunction (vidhi/śabdabhāvanā). And any action needs three components, namely something to be brought about by the action (bhāvya), an instrument to bring it about (karaṇa) and a procedure (itikartavyatā), which is equated to the instrument’s instrument. bhāvanā, vidhi, bhāvya, karaṇa and itikartavyatā are all conveyed by the Vedic prescriptive sentence, but are they conveyed *qua* bhāvanā etc.? The answer is clearly affirmative for bhāvanā and vidhi, which are directly conveyed by tiṅ and liṅ respectively. By contrast, bhāvya, karaṇa and itikartavyatā might need the application of some further investigation on the part of the knower, who will need to apply hermeneutical rules (nyāya) to correctly interpret the sentence and link the bhāvya to the word mentioning the eligible person and the karaṇa to the meaning of the verbal root.

The first pillar (1) is taken up by Maṇḍana.
In fact, Maṇḍana expands on Kumārila’s intuition about human behaviour being always goal-oriented by offering a radical reductionist hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, being a motivator is nothing but communicating that the action to be undertaken is an instrument to some desired result. In this sense, prescribing X to people desiring Y is *nothing but* explaining that X is the means to achieve Y. The “nothing but” part of the definition is key to distinguish Maṇḍana’s position from Kumārila’s. Also for Kumārila a prescription presupposes that one understands that the prescribed action will lead to something independently desired.

Now, I am grateful to Sudipta Munsi, who recently made me read Uṃveka’s commentary on ŚV codanā 214, where Uṃveka rejects a view that seems a proto-version of Kumārila’s one, since it speaks of bhāvanā, of a desired bhāvya and of the meaning of the verbal root, but without mentioning the fact that this conveys the karaṇa. In this proto-Kumārila view, the prescriptive sentence impels (pravṛt-), but since one might doubt this impulsion, it implies (ākṣip-) a bhāvya in the form of something desirable and therefore orients the listener’s understanding to move past the meaning of the verbal root towards the identification of something really desirable. Uṃveka does not use the verb abhidhā- ‘directly denote’, but says that the prescriptive sentences conveys (avagam-) this meaning. The doubt (āśaṅkā) about the impulsion seems to be the reason for the implication (ākṣepa). Uṃveka does not frame this as a case of śrutārthāpatti (postulation of a linguistic element based on cogent evidence), because ākṣepa performs almost the same role (but without the postulation of an explicit linguistic unit, which remains implied).
Uṃveka contrasts to this view his own (vayaṃ tu brūmaḥ), according to which a prescriptive sentence first conveys an impulsion (preraṇā) and then (uttarakālam) conveys (pratī-) a desired goal. Here, there are important points that appear to be influenced by Maṇḍana (please remember that Uṃveka commented on Maṇḍana’s Bhāvanāviveka):

  • The mention of the destruction of accumulated bad karman as the desired result for fixed sacrifices
  • The connection between impulsion and the fact that the action impelled leads to a desirable goal

However, unlike in Maṇḍana, Uṃveka distinguishes impulsion (preraṇā) from the fact of being the instrument to a desired goal, whereas Maṇḍana’s main claim is that the two are completely identical. Uṃveka is possibly the first person mentioning the temporal sequence linking impulsion and the understanding (pratī-) of something as a desirable goal. Like in the discussion of the proto-Kumārila view, Uṃveka does not use the word abhidhā, but he says that the prescriptive content is conveyed (avagam-).

Pārthasārathi (another commentator of Kumārila) de facto embedded Maṇḍana’s view of iṣṭasādhanatā, i.e., the prescribed action is an instrument to a desired result, as part of Kumārila’s śabdabhāvanā theory, more precisely as its procedure (itikartavyatā).

This was just a quick summary. Specifications or corrections are welcome.

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Medhātithi on intention and action

In general, Medhātithi’s commentary systematizes the MDh. In the case of action and intention, he does his best to iron away seeming incongruities by explaining that intentional actions are liable to more blame than unintentional ones, which he accomplishes by adding the needed adverbs or adjective to the wording of MDh (e.g., in his commentary on 9.242 (on intentional vs unintentional crimes), 11.56, 11.77 (on the intentional vs unintentional killing of Brāhmaṇas), 11.125, 11.209 (on deciding expiations when no one is explicitly prescribed)). Accordingly, Medhātithi explains away the “unintentionally” in MDh 11.127, because the strength of the penalty implies that the action was performed intentionally.

As often the case in his commentary, Medhātithi derives his philosophical framework of reference from the deontic teachings of the philosophical school of Mīmāṃsā. For instance, he does not add his own definition of “action” and “intention”, but presupposes the Mīmāṃsā understanding of these concepts.
The speculation on action starts for Mīmāṃsā philosophers by considering the paradigmatic case of complex ritual actions. This means that they consider first and foremost actions spanning over a long period of time (hours or even days) and that cannot be easily explained as the result of ephemeral desires, but rather require what Alfred Mele calls “distal intentions” (intentions about the non-immediate future, see Mele 2006). Nonetheless, they all agree about the pivotal role of desire in action and, in this sense, ground each complex action ultimately in a “primitive” desire (i.e., a desire for something independently desirable, and not desirable for the sake of something else). Typical examples for primitive desires are desires for sons, rain, cattle, happiness, whereas desiring to know the meaning of a certain passage is considered subservient to some other desire, which has led one to read the corresponding text.
Accordingly, Mīmāṃsā authors distinguish between main actions and the activities they are composed of; one’s intention relates to the main action, whereas the intermediate activities are needed sub-steps, but are not independently intended. Therefore, different rules apply to the two sets. This bipartition is taken for granted also in the MDh and by Medhātithi. For instance, MDh 11.11–12 discuss the case of a main action (a sacrifice) being interrupted for want of an ingredient needed for an intermediate activity. Since the main action needs to be completed, one is allowed to complete it even by appropriating a single ingredient in a way which would not be normally allowed (taking it away from someone who does not need it). In other words, the need to complete the main action creates a situation of necessity that permits one to act in a sub-ideal way.
Intention is not dealt separately from blame in the Dharmasūtras nor in the MDh. However, Medhātithi is himself an insightful thinker and often takes up small clues in the MDh to open up a deeper discussion, and this happens in the case of his discussion of intention. Specifically, Medhātithi adds a second axis to the one examined above concerning intentions, prohibitions, and expiations, namely that of intention (saṅkalpa) and motivation. Near the beginning of the MDh, the elements underlying one’s observance of law is briefly outlined, including intention and desire:

To be motivated by desire is not commended, but it is impossible here to be free from desire; for it is desire that prompts vedic study and the performance of vedic rites.
Intention is the root of desire; intention is the wellspring of sacrifices; and intention triggers every religious observance and every rule of restraint—so the tradition declares. Nowhere in this world do we see any activity done by a man free from desire; for whatever at all that a man may do, it is the work of someone who desired it.
By engaging in them properly, a man attains the world of the immortals and, in this world, obtains all his desires just as he intended.

In this passage, Manu asserts a few things. First, he asserts that both engaging in activity and refraining from particular activities are “triggered” by intention (“intention triggers every religious observance and every rule of restraint”). The terminology suggests that Medhātithi is thinking of activities that would have otherwise taken place, and which demand effort on one’s side to be avoided (such as lightning a cigarette as the first thing in the morning for a passionate smoker). In other words, intention triggers one to change the present inertia, be it by undertaking something or refraining from acting inertially.
Second, he asserts—perhaps counter to intuitive notions—that it is intention that comes before and necessitates desire (“intention is the root of desire”). Third, he asserts that desire is a requirement for acting in the world (“Nowhere in this world do we see any activity done by a man free from desire; for whatever at all that a man may do, it is the work of someone who desired it”).
In his commentary, Medhātithi’s develops the ideas in this passage. Specifically, Medhātithi outlines the concept of intention and the required elements for action. Medhātithi introduces the topic of his commentary by first quoting a portion of Manu’s above passage:
Intention is the root of desire; intention is the wellspring of sacrifices; and intention triggers every religious observance and every rule of restraint—so the tradition declares.

Medhātithi then goes on to further explicate a view of how intention relates to desire and action, responding to various objections:

And therefore, he (Manu) spells out what has been said, namely that without a desire the nature of a sacrifice is not carried out. An intention is the root of sacrifices and similar actions, and of desire. A person who desires to perform a sacrifice or a similar action necessarily forms an intention. And when an intention is being formed, it is necessarily the case that a desire is also brought close as caused by it, even if this (desire) is itself not wished. Just like when a person aiming at cooking burns [wood-logs] also smoke is produced, even if unwished, insofar as it is caused by that same cause. In this regard, it is impossible that a sacrifice or a similar action is performed, if desire does not occur.

[Obj.:] Then, what is this intention, which you say to be the root of all actions?

[R:] It is the appearance (sandarśana) of consciousness (cetas), after which desiring (prārthanā) and ascertaining, one after the other, occur. In fact, these mental activities (vyāpāra) attain the role of root for the undertaking of all actions. For, it is not the case that material activities are possible without them. To elaborate: First of all, one ascertains the nature of a given thing, e.g. “This thing produces this effect”. This cognition is here called intention. Thereafter, desiring (prārthanā), i.e., will (icchā) occurs. This is desire (kāma). Once one has the will “How will I realise that (thing) through that (action)?”, one ascertains “I will do it”. This is the ascertaining. Thereafter, one undertakes an action with regard to an external activity which is the instrument to realise [one’s goal]. For instance, a person who wants to eat something first observes the action of eating [by someone else], then wishes “May I eat!”, then ascertains “I will abandon all other activities and eat!”. Then, he tells to the action, the cause, the place and the eligible person: ‘Come together, prepare (sajjīkṛ-) a succulent [food]’.

[Obj.:] But if this is the case, sacrifice and similar actions do not occur just because of an intention. Rather, they occur because of intention, desire and ascertaining. Thus, why does Manu say “sacrifices originate out of intentions”?

[R:] There is no flaw, since the intention is the original cause. For this very reason, he (Manu) will later say that one never sees any action by a person who does not desire anything.

These passages favour a plain reading of the claim in Manu whereby intentions are the root cause of engagement in sacrifices and other actions. At its core, the understanding of intention furthered here appears to be a basic consciousness of how certain acts relate to certain ends. While intentions have an initiatory role, desire and ascertainment necessarily follow. This approach is distinct from cognitivism (as defined by Sarah Paul), insofar as intentions are volitions and not identical with the corresponding beliefs.
In which sense can intention be the cause of desire and not the opposite? Is not it the case that we first experience appetites, then move on to form the intention to satisfy them and then perform the relevant sequence of acts? Let us start with Medhātithi’s starting point, namely that of complex actions, such as sacrifices, that extend through time. In their case, the claim that a basic appetite is what causes one to act, appears less plausible, because appetites are ephemeral and cannot sustain a longer cycle of activities. Accordingly, Medhātithi’s account makes perfect sense when it comes to actions that are performed not because of a basic appetite, but because of a conscious decision, but can it apply also to other kinds of actions?

While focus is placed in these passages on sacrificial and “similar actions”, which indicates a series of complex actions aimed at a particular result, Medhātithi makes it clear that the mental activities of intending, desiring, and ascertaining are the “root for the undertaking of all actions”. This sets up a fairly robust picture of action whereby actors hold in their minds a consciousness of how they understand their movements to interact with the world, which will result in a particular and desired end. In this sense, the psychological sequence Medhātithi sketched above could be a depiction of the phenomenological process through which a certain level of consciousness is a preliminary requirement for the process to be started, but cognition and appetite are also needed. The emphasis on phenomenology is due to the fact that it is hard to make sense of the statement that intentions generate desires (could one say “I intend to have dinner, therefore I am starting to feel hungry”?), but it makes sense that one only becomes aware of desire after having conceived the corresponding intention (“I intend to have dinner and realize that I am in fact hungry”). If taken to its extreme consequences, this would imply that there are no genuine conflicts between intentions and desires, because desires become available to one’s consciousness only once one has intended to do something. If desires are not directly responsible for our actions, how can Medhātithi explain episodes that are often ascribed to them, e.g. in case of what Euro-American philosophers call the “weakness of the will”? For instance, how could he explain the case of one failing to dress up to go to an opera even though they had previously formed the intention to go? Medhātithi could deal with is as a conflict among intentions, not among different causal factors (the intention to go and the desire to stay home) determining one’s actions. Alternatively, he could mention how inertial states take stronger intentions to be resisted and discuss such examples as based on a conflict between an intention and a hard-to-break inertial state. He could argue that it would be hard to dress up even independently of an active desire to stay home (thus proving that the problem is not due to a conflict between intentions and desires), because dressing up (like any act) involves effort, and all efforts are only undertaken if one sees that a bigger advantage will come of out them.

What do you think? Given Medhātithi’s premisses, does my extension of his thought to the above case make sense?

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Permissions for Prabhākara

Is it possible to command someone who is already inclined to act according to Prabhākara? 

Bṛhatī ad 6.1.1 says na pravṛttapravartane prayogaḥ āmantraṇādiṣu vyabhicārāt, literally: “[Exhortative endings] are not used to promote people who are already active, because of the deviant case (vyabhicāra) of invitations”. 

In fact, Prabhākara appears to believe that commands are always imparted on someone who is not yet active and who becomes active upon hearing them. The addressee of a command  desires something already and recognises themselves as the addressee through such desires (see Freschi 2012), but they are not active until they become enjoined.

Now, if Prabhākara means that active people are never promoted to act, why are āmantraṇas a good example? Orders (ājñā) are not used as a standard example because their being a clear case of promoting someone not already active had been attacked by the opponent in the previous line.

As for āmantraṇa, the situation with āmantraṇa is ambiguous, but Śālikanātha takes it as connected to a command uttered among peers (thus, it is not a clear case of a command uttered for people who are not already active). Moreover, what is the role of the vyabhicāra argument? How can a vyabhicāra argument be used to convince someone that something is *always* the case? A vyabhicāra can be used to show that it is incorrect to claim that “All As are B”, since there is at least one A that is not a B, but it can’t be used to corroborate “All As are B” by showing a further case of an A that is indeed B. In other words, why speaking of “vyabhicāra” and not of “yathāmantraṇeṣu” or the like if this was what he meant? The only possible explanation seems to be to think of āmantraṇādiṣu vyabhicārāt as “because the case of invitations, etc., deviates from the [opponent’s] claim”.  

Still, if it is impossible to command someone who is already inclined to act, how can Prabhākara make sense of permissions? When we are already about to light a cigarette and look around and ask whether it is OK and someone tells us “No problem, go ahead!”, isn’t the “go ahead” a command directed to someone who is already active? Could Prabhākara perhaps say that a command cannot enjoin someone who is already active because it would miss the apūrva element?

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Sāṅkhya on śyena

The Sāṅkhya reached its acme before Mīmāṃsā and its position is therefore attacked as a useful departure point for deontic discussions, especially around the case of the śyena in Mīmāṃsā texts (in the following, I will refer to its representation in Veṅkaṭanātha’s TMK).

Interestingly, although the school accepted the authority of the Vedas, Sāṅkhya authors did not insist on their being necessarily consistent and instead highlighted that the prohibition to perform violence should not be overturned, not even in case of sacrificial violence. Accordingly, they understand the sequence:

  • 1. One should not perform violence on any living being
  • 2. If one desires to harm one’s enemy, they should sacrifice bewitching with the śyena

as implying that 1. invalidates 2. Interestingly, Sāṅkhya authors are ready to go as far as stating that this applies also to the following sequence:

  • 1. One should not perform violence on any living being
  • 3. One should sacrifice an animal within the agnīṣomīya sacrifice

Whereas all Mīmāṃsā authors agree that 2. should not be fulfilled (but out of different reasons than the one put forward by Sāṅkhya authors), no one among them would agree in extending this position to 3.

Sāṅkhya authors are therefore presupposing that Vedic commands do not necessarily form a consistent whole and, more importantly, that prohibitions are \emph{unrestricted in their application} (see TMK 5.78). This is connected to a point we will see developed by Maṇḍana, namely the incommensurability of the bad. Transgressing a prohibition involves accumulating pāpa, i.e., bad karman, and this bad output cannot be compensated by any good result one might gather. Prescriptions contrasting with prohibitions are automatically suspended, since prohibitions are unrestricted and always prevail. Only prescriptions not contrasting with prohibitions are valid.

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Preliminary thoughts on truth and justification in U.T. Vīrarāghavācārya —UPDATED

U.T. Vīrarāghavācārya’s Sūkṣmārthaṭīkā defines `validity’ (prāmāṇya) as “the fact of being about a thing (viṣaya) appearing in the cognition in the same way in which it exists” (ad 1.1.5, p. 77 1971), thus showing an awareness of the distinction between the knowledge-independent real thing and its representation in knowledge. If the two correspond, there is knowledge.

Contrary to the common use of the word viṣaya (see Freschi, Keidan), Vīrarāghavācarya appears to denote the knowledge-independent real thing as viṣaya. This thing is said to specify (viśeṣaṇa) a cognition when this is about it. In the case of a valid cognition, the viṣaya specifies the cognition which appears as specified by that viṣaya.

Now, what happens in case of invalid cognitions? Can it be that the knowledge-independent thing has no impact at all on the invalid cognition? Vīrarāghavācārya distinguishes therefore between the prakāra `mode’ of cognition, i.e., the apparent content of it, the viṣeṣaṇa `specification’ of the cognition, and the viṣaya `knowledge-independent thing’. Suppose two people see a piece of mother-of-pearl on the beach and one of the two mistakes it for silver. Both have in front of them the same viṣaya, which influences (viśiṣ-) the cognition in the same way. However, the prakāra of the cognition is different, being in one case mother-of-pearl and in the other silver. In other words, we have valid cognitions when the prakāra appearing in the cognition is about the viṣaya and invalid cognitions when the viṣaya does not appear in the cognition as its viśeṣaṇa.

Thus, an erroneous cognition is prompted by a certain viṣaya (e.g., mother-of-pearl) and has a different prakāra (e.g., silver), but it continues to be determined by its viṣaya. Why not just speaking of viṣaya and prakāra? Possibly because the viṣaya belongs to the ontological field, whereas the way it affects cognitions is via its determining them (viṣeṣyakatva).

The latter term needs to be introduced in order to avoid the naïve assumption that the cognition represents directly the external object. prakāra and viṣaya are connected via the fact that a viṣaya determines the cognition, which therefore displays the resulting prakāra.

Last, U.T. Vīrarāghavācārya also speaks of characteristic (dharma) and characteristic-bearer (dharmin). The dharma is the presentation-mode of a certain external object. In this sense, the dharma-dharmin pair on the ontological level corresponds to the prakāra-viṣaya one on the epistemic one. A correct cognition recognises as its prakāra the same dharma which actually inheres in a given dharmin.

At this point one might wonder whether the picture of the SĀṬ corresponds broadly to an externalist account. In fact, it mentions an external check (the correspondence between the viṣaya and the prakāra) for truth. However, such account of truth is only normatively relevant. For all practical purposes, truth does not need to be ascertained. U.T. Vīrarāghavācārya is an upholder of intrinsic validity and, hence, the externalist account of truth is accompanied by an account of justification which requires neither external nor internal reasons.
There is also something else which is interestingly new with respect to the Seśvaramīmāṃsā account of epistemology, namely the link between access to cognitions and justification of validity (and here I would be glad to read your thoughts!). In fact, first U.T. Vīrarāghavācārya says that validity is intrinsic because a knower grasps at the same time what appears as the content of a cognition and the cognition’s determining factor. Then, his Naiyāyika opponent retorts that validity is extrinsic, because what appears as the content of a given cognition is not the same thing as what appears once one thinks about the cognitive event.

Then, U.T. Vīrarāghavācārya replies that this is not a real problem, since it is enough for justification that what appears at the metalevel is connected to what appears in the cognition, thus pointing to svataḥprāmāṇya vs parataḥprāmāṇya as being about cognition-objects and their representations at a meta-cognitive level. If the two happen to diverge, then, it appears, an additional step of external justification is needed.

In other words, the picture gets more complex once one adds to the above quasi-externalist account of truth the awareness of validity (see next posts) and U.T. Vīrarāghavācārya seems more open to the Nyāya point of view than Veṅkaṭanātha.