Category Archives: Veṅkaṭanātha/Vedānta Deśika

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The role of convention in signification

In his Seśvaramīmāṃsā ad 1.1.12, Veṅkaṭanātha explains that the example of proper names does not prove that language in general depends on convention. He writes that the case of proper names is not a dahanadṛṣṭānta, possibly ‘an example which sets on fire [the whole theory]’.

Why so? Because

प्रकृते यथोपलम्भं स्वभावसहकार्यादिनियमात्*

Because in the case at hand (i.e., language, composed of proper names and common words) there is a restrictive rule regarding the role of intrinsic signification and its auxiliaries according to how [linguistic expressions] are grasped.

In other words, convention, as an auxiliary of intrinsic signification, plays a role, but only in the case of proper names. And the distinction is possible based on one’s experience of linguistic expressions, insofar as linguistic expressions which are not proper names are immediately grasped as significant by people who know the language. By contrast, they might have doubts when they encounter proper names of unknown places or people.

These are, as usual, my thoughts only. Should you have a different understanding, you are welcome to share it. I would be happy and grateful to read it.

*(The editions add a च after प्रकृते, which makes the connection with the previous sentence unclear. The manuscripts provide a better reading, without the च).

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What were the ṛṣis up to while composing the Vedas? UPDATED

While commenting on PMS 1.1.4, Veṅkaṭanātha makes a long digression aimed at refuting every kind of intellectual intuition, especially as a source for knowing dharma. Dharma, he explains, can only be known through the Veda.
People who claim to have directly perceived dharma are, by contrast, liars. This seems consistent in most cases, but may be problematic when it comes to the Veda, who are believed (by some) to have been composed by some ancient sages of the past, the ṛṣis. Veṅkaṭanātha explains that it is not the case that out of their austerities they gained the ability to directly perceive dharma, also because this would lead to a vicious circle, insofar as efficacious austerities would need to be based on the Veda. Thus, ṛṣis are not an exception to the rule.
This means that the ṛṣis did not compose the Vedas. How comes that they could teach them? Their teaching was based on the Vedas themselves (a Mīmāṃsaka would add: because time is beginningless).

Their (the ṛṣis’) teaching, by contrast, is of human origin, although it may come from the Veda (āgama). Therefore, the listeners [of such teaching] need to reflect on its root and once one eliminates that this teaching is based on a [supersensuous] perception originated out of the dharma’s energy, one needs to look for another pramāṇa for this dharma. And this is nothing but the Veda (itself) (śāstra).

tadupadeśasya tu āgamāyamānasyāpi pauruṣeyatayā śrotṝṇāṃ mūlaparāmarśasāpekṣatvena dharmavīryaprasūtapratyakṣamūlatvapariśeṣe tasmin dharme pramāṇāntaram anveṣaṇīyam. tac ca nānyat śāstrāt.

I am grateful to Meera Sridhara’s comment for having forced me to rethink my interpretation of śrotṛ (see below for her comment).
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The role of the prescription to teach the Veda according to Prabhākara

If you are a Prābhākara, you think that students don’t have to learn the Veda and that they actually do it because of the teachers’ duty to teach it. This certainly solves the problem of having a young boy (younger than 8) deciding to study the Veda based on an analysis of the benefits he will get out of this study. Does this also solve the problem of whether one should study also Mīmāṃsā?

In other words, assuming that one learns the Veda due to the prescription to teach it, does this prescription include the duty to teach the meaning? No, says Veṅkaṭanātha in his refutation of the Prābhākara position. Just like the knowledge of the meaning of the Veda is no included in the prescription to learn it by heart, so it is not included in the prescription to teach it. Both stop their function at the Vedic phonemes.

So far so good, but then Veṅkaṭanātha adds an additional reason why the prescription to teach does not reach until the meaning of the Veda, namely:

अबाधितप्रत्ययोत्पत्तावनपेक्षत्वलक्षणप्रामाण्यस्य वक्ष्यमाणत्वाच्च

And because in the case of the coming into being of a cognition which has not been invalidated, we will say that its validity (prāmāṇya) consists in its being independent. (SM ad 1.1.1, 1971 p. 27)

The reference is clearly to PMS 1.1.5, where the Veda is said to be a pramāṇa because it is independent from any other source. That is, once a cognition has indeed come into being and is not sublated, the only thing which could make one doubt about it is its having the wrong source, but if it is independent on any source, no such worry can arise. Why is this said here? Perhaps because a cognition of the meaning does indeed take place upon learning the Veda by heart and unless one can prove that it is wrong, one needs to consider it valid. Hence, the need to study Mīmāṃsā cannot be justified on the basis of the need to understand the meaning of the Veda.

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Anubandhacatuṣṭaya

Anubandhacatuṣṭaya, i.e., the four points you need to discuss at the beginning of a treatise (its topic, the purpose, the audience and the connection) are sometimes read back into texts which lacked them (as it happens with the maṅgala read into Aṣṭ 1.1.1).

When do they start being explicitly discussed? And by which kind of authors? I know of Buddhists like Dharmottara (and Yāmari, thanks to Eli Franco) and Vedānta ones.

Within Mīmāṃsā, Kumārila at the beginning of the Ślokavārttika, pratijñā section, speaks of content (viṣaya), purpose (prayojana) and connection (sambandha). The absence of the ideal reader is no suprise, since before the end of the first millennium this is often the case.

Within Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, Veṅkaṭanātha at the beginning of his Seśvaramīmāṃsā speaks of content, purpose, ideal reader and seemingly not of the connection, although he might be referring to it by speaking of a pravṛttiprakāra. Hence, the group of four was possibly not yet crystallised?

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The role of the prescription to learn the Veda

Why should one study Mīmāṃsā? In order to understand the meaning of the Veda, say Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā authors. But why should one learn the Veda? According to Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā, because a Vedic prescription itself tells you to do so. The prescription at stake is svādhyāyo ‘dhyetavyaḥ “One should study one’s portion of the Veda”, called adhyayanavidhi. This, however, leads to several problems.

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Does a prescription with two results become meaningless? UPDATED

In his Seśvaramīmāṃsā, Veṅkaṭanātha (aka Vedānta Deśika) discusses why it is the case that we need to study Mīmāṃsā.

The most likely candidate as a prescription causing one to undertake such study is svādhyāyo’dhyetavyaḥ ‘one should learn the portion of the Veda learn in one’s family’. Veṅkaṭanātha will conclude that this prescription culminates in the learning by heart of the phonemes, leaving aside the grasping of the meaning.
Before that point, however, he analyses the view of those who say that the prescription remains valid until one has studied Mīmāṃsā. These think that each prescription needs an indipendently desirable result (phala). The learning alone cannot be construed as such a result (p. 20 of the 1971 edition), because it is not independently desirable. If one were to construe both the learning of one’s portion of the Veda and the understanding of its meaning as the result (bhāvya), the prescription would end up being meaningless.

Therefore, one should
1. either postulate heaven as the result, according to the Viśvajit rule (according to which one can postulate heaven as result whenever no result is mentioned)
2. or postulate that all results could be achieved, since learning the Veda pleases the deities and the ancestors, who would then grant one all results.

I will come back to why these hypotheses are refuted, but meanwhile, why is it the case that the prescription would become meaningless? Because neither the learning of the sheer Vedic phonems, nor the understanding of the meaning are intrinsically desirable, and each prescription needs a desirable goal.

The Sanskrit passage reads as follows:

svādhyāyārthabodhayos tu bhāvyatve vidhyānarthakyaprasaṅgāt

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Artistic frame and philosophically engaging content

atiśakvarī and other meters in the SM

The Seśvaramīmāṃsā by Veṅkaṭanātha is a commentary on PMS, but includes also floating verses and summary verses (saṅgrahaśloka) at the beginning and end of each book and at the end of each adhikaraṇa. All verses are ślokas, possibly in order to be understandable and clear, apart from the first three and the last one of SM 1. These are more the creation of a virtuoso.

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What is the purpose of PMS 1.1.26?

Sucarita, Vedānta Deśika and Uttamur T. Vīrarāghavācārya thereon

I am again pleasantly stuck in a passage of Uttamur T. Vīrarāghavācārya’s learned commentary on the Pūrva Mīmāṃsā Sūtra. This time he is discussing PMS 1.1.26, which is an important sūtra for philosophy of language, but one whose wordings was unclear even within Mīmāṃsā:

loke sanniyamāt prayogasannikarṣaḥ syāt

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Intrinsic and extrinsic validity of cognitions

A discussion in Seśvaramīmāṃsā ad 1.1.5

Vedānta Deśika (13th c. South India) stages a discussion between thinkers of the Mīmāṃsā and Nyāya schools on the topic of the validity of cognitions. The first school thinks that validity is intrinsic, the latter thinks it is extrinsic. The Naiyāyika starts by stating “Valid cognitions are produced by the cause producing cognitions plus an additional element (producing their validity), because, while being an effect, they are specified by such an additional element, like invalid cognition are specified by an additional element distinguishing them from valid ones” (vigitā pramā samyaṅmithyāvabodhasādhāraṇakāraṇāt atiriktasahitāj jāyate, kāryatve sati tadviśeṣatvāt apramāvat).
But this does not hold in the case of the Lord’s cognition, which is permanent and uncaused (the Lord has no new cognitions, but perpetually knows everything).

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Contradictions among śruti and smṛti

Uttamur T. Vīrarāghavācārya on the topic

Within his commentary on PMS 1.1.5, Veṅkaṭanātha discusses conflicts among different sources of linguistic communication, e.g., the Vedas and the Buddhist canon, or the Vedas and the Dharmaśāstras.

The second way is much trickier, because since the time of Kumārila every Mīmāṃsaka agrees that recollected texts such as Dharmaśāstras are also based on the Veda. Hence, how is contradiction at all possible? And, if there is any, how to deal with it?

The subcommentary by Uttamur T. Vīrarāghavācārya is worth quoting extensively:

Recollected texts and directly heard sacred text are either about something to be done or about a state of affairs (tattva). In the first case,
one experiences here and there an option among actions due to a specific sacred text and a specific recollected text [prescribing two different courses of actions].
Then, there is indeed option [between the contradictory commands], because one postulates (sambhū-) also a sacred text being the root for the recollected text which points to actions contradicting the available sacred text (so that the contradiction is no longer between an available sacred text and a recollected one, but between two sacred texts).

smṛtyāgamayor […] kāryaviṣayakatvaṃ vā, tattvaviṣayakatvaṃ vā. ādye, kriyāvikalpasya śrutibhedena smṛ[ti]bhedena ca tatra tatra darśanāt pratyakṣaśrutiviruddhakriyāparasmṛtimūlabhūtaśruter api sambhāvitatvāt vikalpa eva.

I should add that only the first case (ādya) is addressed, because so does the main text (the Seśvaramīmāṃsā). Anyway, the concluding line is more complicated:

But, since on an optional matter one handles as one wishes, they prefer only the sacred text which is presently available —this [approach] is different than that.

paraṃ vikalpitasthale yathāruci anuṣṭhānāt pratyakṣaśrutam eva rocayanta ity anyad etat.

Now, a couple of things puzzle me here. First, what is the causal connection between the first clause and the second one? Why is it that if one handles as one wishes, one prefers the directly available sacred text? Second, what it meant by anyad etat?

Do readers have any suggestion?