1. What is the nature of a prescription? After many discussions, examining the positions of Prabhākara and Bhartṛhari, the answer is that a Vedic prescription is just the statement that the action prescribed is the instrument to get a desired output.
2. If the above is true, how can one distinguish between fixed and elective rituals?

Let me now elaborate on both topics.

First, a sacrifice is considered by Maṇḍana to be an iṣṭasādhana, i.e., an instrument to something desired. A sacrificial injunction is therefore just the communication that the sacrifice is such (i.e., an instrument to something desired). Thus,

O(x/desire for y)

means

x is an instrument for y

This would work also for negative obligations, e.g.,

O (not eating (x)/desire for y)

means

forming the intention not to eat x is an instrument for y

Please notice that this could also cover cases of negative obligations which apply to everyone (in this case, according to the Viśvajit-metarule, one postulates heaven, i.e., happiness, as result):

O (not doing x/T)

is re-read as:

O (not doing x/desire for heaven)

This, in turn, means:

forming the intention to refrain from doing x is an instrument for heaven

This means that omitting the enjoined action (that is, not forming the intention to refrain from x) only leads to the non-obtainment of heaven. The situation would have been different had the same action x been forbidden, as will be explained immediately below.

What about prohibitions? They communicate one that the action prohibited is an instrument to something undesired, i.e., suffering (duḥkha).
Thus,

F (x/T)

means

x is an instrument for something absolutely undesirable

For instance, the prohibition to perform violence on any living beings (na hiṃsyāt sarvā bhūtāni) has the structure:

F (violence/T)

and not

*O (not violence/T)

because, if respected, it does not lead to any positive result (unlike an obligation), whereas, if transgressed, it leads to a negative output.

This means that prohibitions and prescriptions have a similar structure (both state that a given action is an instrument for something, respectively desirable or undesirable). Prescriptions are, however, in general effective only on people who desire that outcome, whereas prohibitions are effective on everyone, since the forbidden action would lead to outcomes which are absolutely undesirable (pāpa, which will interfere with all of one’s future undertakings).

The main advantage of this structure, as I can see it, is that one avoids the main problems of having a deontic logic, by translating deontic statements into descriptive ones.

What about the śyena, which prescribes one to perform a sacrifice leading to violence? śyena is anartha, i.e., in Maṇḍana’s understanding, it is also an instrument for something undesired, that is suffering (duḥkha). Thus, it should not be performed because it has this structure:

Śyena–»violence

and given:

F(violence/T)

we know that:

violence–»something undesired

Thus,

śyena–»something undesired

Thus, the choice to perform a śyena would be based on a misjudgement of what is at stake, since the positive output (the death of one’s enemy) is anyway less positive than the negative sanction that will follow.
NB: The target reader of Maṇḍana appears to be a rational agent who is completely able to judge the outcomes of their actions (unlike in the case of Prabhākara).

This leads to a problem, however, because if all sacrifices are considered to be just instruments to something desired, how can one account for the difference between elective and fixed results? It would indeed seem that all sacrifices are just recommended if one wants to achieve a given result, no more than that. Why would one perform some every day and some others only on given occasions? If the performance depended on the desire, an opponent suggests, then there would be no fixed sacrifices, since as soon as one gets what one desired, one would stop performing the sacrifice.

Maṇḍana examines various scenarios, including one that says that if one omits the performance of fixed sacrifices, one obtains pāpa (demerit), which will then block any further enterprise. Thus, fixed sacrifice would have as a positive result only the reduction of pāpa, whereas the their omission has a negative result, i.e., accumulation of further pāpa.

But what about the auxiliaries of fixed and elective sacrifices? According to all Mīmāṃsā authors, the former have to be performed as much as one can, the latter exactly as prescribed. Why this difference, if both sacrifices are just the same thing, namely instruments to something desired? Maṇḍana explains that the Vedic prescriptions enjoining fixed sacrifices prescribe them “as long as one lives”. This means that in their case the fixedness does not depend on the nature of the desire (i.e., they are not fixed just because one fixedly desires their output) but rather on the Vedic prescriptions prescribing them.
Thus, due to the metarule that says that the Veda cannot prescribe meaningless things and due to the metarule that only possible things can be prescribed, the “as long as one lives” clause cannot mean to perform auxiliaries exactly as prescribed. Thus, auxiliaries of fixed sacrifices are to be performed only as much as one can.

One might wonder: What about elective sacrifices to be done in order to obtain heaven? Given that heaven is happiness and every one desires happiness all the time, such sacrifices are potentially also to be performed all the time. Should one perform also their auxiliaries as much as possible?

The answer is no, because each elective sacrifice is incumbent on one every day anew and as such one is responsible to perform it (adhikārin) only if one has all relevant sacrificial ingredients. If one lacks them, one is not the adhikārin and therefore does not have to perform the sacrifice. Thus, there is no need to perform a sacrifice as much as one can.

By contrast, in the case of fixed sacrifices, one needs to perform them every day, since they are fixed, one is therefore always the adhikārin of them simply by being alive. Therefore, if one lacks, e.g., a relevant ingredient, one just performs the sacrifice as much as one can.

The Prābhākara insists that all sentences should be injunctive in character, and that Upaniṣadic sentences should also be interpreted in this way. But what exactly could they prescribe? They could enjoin one to know their content, they suggest. But this option is not viable, since there is no difference between “s is p” and “you ought to know that s is p” insofar as one knows that s is p through the first sentence, too.

A further option would be that the Upaniṣadic sentences enjoin one to know their meaning in a definite way (niścaya), but this option is also ruled out. For, if the niścaya were obtained through language alone, then it would occur automatically, without the need to enjoin it. If it were not obtained through language alone, then it would occur because of something other than language, but then the Upaniṣads would no longer be the instrument for knowing about the ātman, which runs against other fundaments of the school.

At this point, the Prābhākara-like objector suggests a further possibility, namely that Upaniṣadic sentences prescribe arthaparatā, i.e., the ‘intentness on the meaning’. This also does not go, because prescriptions need to have preferably a visible purpose, like ritual prescriptions. And understanding sentences as aiming primarily at their meaning would put at a disadvantage exactly prescriptive sentences, which aim not only at conveying their meaning, but also at urging someone to perform a given activity. Moreover, a prescription should aim at a certain goal and knowledge cannot be a goal separated from the content to be known (as explained above with regard to the case of whether the understanding itself could be enjoined): ज्ञानस्य ज्ञेयाभिव्याप्तिफलत्वात् फलान्तरानभ्युपगमात्।

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.

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.

• 1. Each prescription needs an independently desirable purpose and it is not clear what could be the purpose here (I discussed this topic in a previous post, here)
• 2. Did you understand the adhyayanavidhi while reading it? If not, you really need to study Mīmāṃsā, but you will not get there, since you will not even start learning by heart the Vedas, given that you never came to know that you should have learnt them. Did you understand the adhyayanavidhi? Great! But this means that you don’t need to study Mīmāṃsā, since you already understand the meaning of Vedic prescriptions, isn’t it?

Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā authors can solve the problem by saying that one does not have an independent duty to learn the Veda, but one does it nonetheless because teachers have the duty to teach and there cannot be teaching without learning. In other words, they can in this way make sense of the fact that at the time you undertake the learning, you are not mature enough to decide rationally on the basis of a means-goals calculation.

Rāmānuja and Veṅkaṭanātha are overtly against Prabhākara for other reasons. Hence, they need to offer a different solution. Accordingly, Rāmānuja suggests that the prescription to learn does indeed reach until the meaning, but that the meaning it reaches is not a fully satisfactory one. It leads one to an āpātapratīti of it. Veṅkaṭanātha elaborates further the implications of this assumption: Through the prescription to learn, one is led up to a first impression of the meaning of the Veda. Then, out of interest, one continues studying Mīmāṃsā in order to solve one’s doubts and achieve proficiency in the Vedic texts.

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

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?

How is bādha dealt with? Śabara’s investigation on the problem starts by asking what exactly is bādhita `blocked’ in such cases. Is it something already obtained (prāpta) or not? If it was already obtained to our treasure of knowledge, how can it then later be blocked without invalidating the epistemological status of the Veda? If it was not yet obtained, how can it be blocked?

The discussions on bādha become longer and longer in Kumārila’s commentary on Śabara and then in Somanātha’s sub-commentary on Kumārila. Somanātha explains that in case of bādha what happens is not that a later prescription or prohibition invalidates a previous one, for the reasons just said. Rather, what is blocked is only one’s understanding of that precept. One thought at first that “Do X” meant “Do X in all cases”, but after having heard “Do not do X in case of y”, one revises one’s understanding and comes to interpret “Do X” as “Do X in all cases apart from y”. Thus, the initial prescription is rephrased as referring to all but the content of the later deontic statement (y-vyatirikta X).
The first prescription had this restricted scope all the way long, so that no part of it is in fact invalidated, but one’s belief is blocked and needs a revision. Somanātha speaks here of the need to take back one’s previous opinion (buddhi-apahāra), not the existence of the epistemic content (viṣayasattva).

Somanātha articulates it in terms of the opposition between a sāmānyaśāstra ‘general teaching’ and a viśeṣaśātra ‘particular teaching’. This is tantamount to the well-known principle of jurisprudence that Lex specialis derogat legi generali, but the interesting point is how exactly this occurs. In order to avoid endangering the validity of the first prescription’s source, namely the Veda, Somanātha explains that the Veda initially produced only a cognition (jñāna), which is not necessarily valid, and that a specific understanding (vijñāna, interpreted as viśeṣa jñāna) comes about only thereafter, through the mechanism of bādha.

In some concluding verses he sums up the point by saying that as long as one looked at the Veda from a one-sided perspective (ekadeśa) one had a certain understanding of it. Later, through the completion of one’s perspective (paripūrṇa), one also gets a full (samasta) understanding of the meaning at stake.

Why is bādha relevant (for us)? It is interesting for us because it can show us new ways of dealing with such problems and it can drive out attention to problems we would not have considered otherwise.

Who wrote about it? All Mīmāṃsā authors needed to deal with this problem. In a sense, bādha is the reason for the existence of Mīmāṃsā. Had the Veda not entailed any seeming contradictions, the Mīmāṃsā enterprise would not have been undertaken.

Do readers share the impression that what we are dealing with in Somanātha’s interpretation is a device to account for belief-revision?

To my knowledge, Veṅkaṭanātha’s Seśvaramīmāṃsā (henceforth SM) has been commented upon only once in Sanskrit, namely in the 20th c. by Abhinava Deśika Vīrarāghavācārya.
Vīrarāghavācārya continues Veṅkaṭanātha’s agenda in reinterpreting Mīmāṃsā tenets in a Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta way.

On the meaning of dharma and on the polemics between a sādhya and siddha interpretation of the Veda, he writes:

Deities need to be pleased (ārādhya), what needs to be realised is the result.

(ārādhyā devatāḥ, sādhyaṃ phalam, ad SM ad PMS 1.1.1, 1971 edition of the SM, p.10)

Similarly, within the commentary on SM ad PMS 1.1.2, Vīrarāghavācārya interprets a quote by Parāśara Bhaṭṭa according to Maṇḍana’s distinction among various deontic concepts and then adds a further level:

The instruction which has necessarily to be performed is the command. The permission is the instruction which presupposes a desire for the experience of a result which is not forbidden. It has as content something desirable. An instruction having as content a forbidden purpose (as in the case of the Śyena) is a permission which has occurred automatically [but will be later subdued] (āpātānujñā).

The added level is labelled āpātānujñā. This is, as far as I know, a neologism. It indicates the fact that prescriptions about malefic sacrifices are not the Veda’s final words on the topic. They look like prescriptions, but in fact:

1. like all other textual passages presupposing human desires, they are only instructions about how to reach something, they do not state that one should desire it.
2. on top of that will then be sublated insofar as they presuppose a purpose which is prohibited in another part of the Veda.

Point 1 is a standard Mīmāṃsā devise to justify Vedic passages about malefic sacrifices. Vīrarāghavācārya adds point 2 to the landscape, thus highlighting that the textual passages about malefic sacrifices are ultimately sublated insofar as the purpose they presuppose is prohibited.

Vīrarāghavācārya probably formed the term āpātānujñā on the basis of āpātadhī. This is a term introduced by Rāmānuja and discussed at length by Veṅkaṭanātha. It means `automatic understanding’ of the Veda, the one one gathers while learning the Veda by heart without caring for investigating into its meaning. Such an automatic understanding will be later revised while one investigates the meaning of the Veda. Vīrarāghavācārya implicitly suggests that it can even be completely reversed.

Have readers ever encountered the term āpātānujñā?

At a certain point in the history of Mīmāṃsā (and, consequently, of Vedānta), the discussion of the reasons for undertaking the study of Mīmāṃsā becomes a primary topic of investigation. When did this exactly happen? The space dedicated to the topic increases gradually in the centuries, but Jaimini and Śabara don’t seem to be directly interested in it.

Nonetheless, Śabara needs to explain a related topic, namely when studying the Mīmāṃsā —before or after one’s study of the Veda. Kumārila and Prabhākara introduce the prescription to learn the Veda (svādhyāyo ‘dhyetavyaḥ, see Kataoka 2001b) and the one to teach the Veda, respectively, as the prescriptions prompting the study of the Veda and, indirectly, of its meaning. Kumārila explains that the prescription to study the Veda does not include a result which can be independently desired and that one therefore needs to insert the knowledge of its meaning as the result. Prabhākara explains that a teacher needs to know the meaning of the Veda in order to teach the Veda and that the dignity of being a teacher is something independently desirable.

The space to the topic of why studying Mīmāṃsā and which prescription promotes it increases drastically —I would say— after Śālikanātha (8th c.?). Why did this question become relevant? Perhaps because its answer was less obvious and one needed to persuade a different kind of public. A public who knew of the importance of studying the Veda, but was not immediately convinced of the importance of undertaking also a detailed study of the Mīmāṃsā exegesis. I wonder whether part of the problem is due to also to a) Śaṅkara’s statement that the Vedāntins do not need to study Mīmāṃsā and b) the fact that the Mīmāṃsā presents itself as a Vedic exegesis, but in fact looks at the Vedas from the vantage point of the Brāhmaṇas, so that an audience more interested in other parts of the Vedas might be less convinced of the usefulness of Mīmāṃsā.

Veṅkaṭanātha, though primarily a Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedāntin, dedicates the first 28 pages of his commentary on the Pūrva Mīmāṃsā Sūtra to this topic. He refutes both the Bhāṭṭa and the Prābhākara points of view. The Bhāṭṭas are wrong because the knowledge of the meaning of the Veda is not something independently desirable. The Prābhākaras are wrong because the prescription to teach is not sufficiently established and, even if it were, it would not include the knowledge of the meaning of the Veda.
Veṅkaṭanātha analyses at length all position and then concludes briskly that the study of Mīmāṃsā needs to be undertaken out of one’s desire (hence the desiderative ending in PMS 1.1.1). In order to legitimate this desire, Veṅkaṭanātha is able to show that PMS 1.1.1 (through the linguistic expression atha) shows that taking time to undertake the study of Mīmāṃsā does not violate other prescriptions and that there is a suitable time for it.

European readers may feel some sympathy with Mīmāṃsā authors, who were possibly just intellectually interested in Mīmāṃsā exegesis, but had to face external challenges and to structure their intuitions about the Mīmāṃsā being “interesting” into a consistent research project.