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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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Sonam Kachru, Other Lives

Other Lives (2021) is a reflection on Vasubandhu’s Viṃśikā which has several virtues to recommend it:

  1. Its author merges harmonically multiple sources. Among them are Buddhist authors, not just Indian, but also Tibetan, Chinese and Japanese, but also their contemporary interpreters (from Doniger to Zimmerman), as well as Sanskrit writers (from Candragomin to Subandhu), European writers (from Musil to Sartre!), European philosophers (from Descartes to Marx and Sextus Empiricus), scientists (predominantly Darwin and other scholars of biology and evolution) and contemporary Analytic philosophers (from Dummett to Kripke).
  2. Kachru takes seriously Vasubandhu’s arguments, e.g., on causality and on perception, both of which cannot be just read as based on the interaction of two solid and mind-independent entities (epistemology might here have to do more with philosophy of action than with ontology, and not just because of the theory of karman).
  3. Kachru also takes seriously Vasubandhu’s “conceptual toolkit”, trying to understand what it means to think for a Buddhist thinker of his time and place. Note that this creates a tension with No. 2, but this is a productive tension.
  4. Kachru is a self-reflective authors, openly discussing his methodology, which he does not take for granted as the only possible one (or “the right one”).
  5. Kachru also shares interesting thoughts about his translation of the Viṃśikā, which he, meritoriously, adds to the book.

What does No. 3 mean for the analysis of the Viṃśikā? Primarily, that SK invites us to take seriously Vasubandhu’s use of his examples (primarily: dreams, pretas and life in hell). SK stresses that dreams should not be understood as the example in a Sanskrit syllogism (as they have been later used, for instance in Advaita Vedānta). Similarly, he dwells with what it means to discuss pretas and beings in hell as alternative viewpoints that relativize the privileged position of our POV on reality.

The result is that one finishes the book feeling less sure about the “solidity” of the external world. The past feels less safely past and the present’s dependence to it opens up to the possibility of a continuity between the two and, hence, of processes rather than concluded events in which entities persisting through time interact with each other. What is the alternative? One possibility, enactivism, is discussed in chapter 5 using the work of Matthew MacKenzie and Evan Thompson. SK appears to be positively impressed by their work, but sees “reasons to be cautious”. Why?
First of all,

“As MacKenzie notes, as a theoretical program, enactivism involves several claims. One of its claims plainly does not apply: perceptual experience is not itself considered a form of action (or even activity) by Vasubandhu (nor indeed, by any Buddhist philosopher in his orbit, as far as I know)” (p. 123).

Moreover,

As I read him, Vasubandhu’s way of entangling features of the environ- ment and living beings does not depend on facts in the present, nor is it derived from scrutiny of the dynamic inner workings of an organism with an eye on the way in which an organism structures its environment and itself over time. […] Vasubandhu […] does not have the resources to make the kinds of claims MacKenzie thinks Buddhists should be making” (p. 124).

You can also read an endless thread by me on this book on Twitter, here.

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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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Reflections on the translation of SM 1

Scholars of Sanskrit (as well as ancient Greek, classical Tamil, Chinese…) are familiar with translations oscillating between the following two extremes:

  • A translation which closely follows the original and is chiefly meant as an aid to understand the Sanskrit text (as in Kataoka 2011)
  • A translation which smooths the text, so that it sounds as if it had been originally written in the target language

It seems that the choice of approaching more the one than the other partly depends also on one’s target language and on the cultural expectations linked to a certain literary civilisation, since readers of, e.g., English or German appear to have very different expectations concerning what counts as a good translation, with the former being much more positively impressed by texts which sound as if they had been composed in their own language, whereas the latter tend to expect from the translation that it transmits part of the flair of the original language, as if it could be partly transparent and let one glimpse the original through it (see Venuti 1995). The other element of the choice is the reader one has in mind. The first model presupposes a reader who knows Sanskrit fairly well and uses the translation only as an auxiliary, the second one assumes the reverse.

A third element worth considering regards the translator themselves. They need an extremely good command of English in order to translate in the second way (which is not my case). Moreover, they need to think of the duration of one’s translation. Each language rapidly evolves so that translating in a very idiomatic way runs the risk of rendering the text less understandable for non-native speakers or speakers who will live in a not so distant future. As a non-native speaker of English, I have, for instance, had problems deciphering the English idioms used in a translation by Anand Venkatkrishnan (in Venkatkrishnan 2015, see the discussion here: http://wp.me/p3YaBu-jz) and many readers of mine had asked me what “ones” in Edgerton 1929 or “ain’t” in other authors could mean. In other words, a strongly idiomatic translation is restricted —in at least some aspects— to native speakers of the present
and immediately following decade.

My translation of the SM aims at being close enough to the text to make it conceptually understandable to a public of Sanskritists as well as to scholars of the history of philosophy and theology. It does not reproduce the complexity of Vedānta Deśika’s prose, nor does it attempt at capturing the beauty of his verses. I tried to make the translation readable also to non-Sanskritists, while being at the same time extremely cautious in not over translating the Sanskrit text. As a rule of thumb, I used the concept of functional equivalence, which was used, e.g., by Raimon Panikkar in discussing comparative theology. Accordingly, I changed passive forms (which are the rule in scholarly Sanskrit) into active ones, since the latter are the rule in scholarly English. I also made pronouns and copulae explicit and avoided causative clauses when possible, since this is the rule in scholarly English. I also broke long sentences into shorter ones, since the length of an acceptable sentence varies massively between scholarly Sanskrit and scholarly English. Nonetheless, the resulting text will not be smooth, because the source text is extremely complex and causes real head-aches to its readers. Smoothing it completely would have meant unpacking all the points it presupposes and hints at.

Whichever type of translation one favours, translating a Sanskrit text always remains a difficult task. In my opinion, this is due especially to the fact that contemporary readers lack almost completely the background assumptions which are required in order to understand each instance of communication, including philosophical texts. While reading a text by Plato, a contemporary reader educated in Europe will automatically be able to identify most of the trees, places (e.g., the Piraeus, at the beginning of the Republic), social institutions (e.g., the role of theater, the names of gods and goddesses, the presence of slaves) and the other realia he mentions. Readers will not be scared by reading geographic or ethnic names (e.g., hoi Thrâkes, in Republic A 327), nor by proper names (e.g. Socrates or Glaucon, ibid.). This familiarity is also reflected in the fact that there are English (as well as French, German, Italian, Spanish…) versions of these terms. Even more, readers will likely be at least slightly familiar with many of Plato’s ideas, such as the maieutic method or the realm of ideas.

The situation is completely different in the case of Sanskrit texts, where Euro-American readers often need to deal with unfamiliar terms, contexts and ideas. Let me call the lack of familiarity with names, works, contexts, customs, etc., circumstantial unfamiliarity and the lack of familiarity with philosophical ideas philosophical unfamiliarity. The unfamiliarity with ideas might be something readers are willing to live with —after all, they started reading a book about an unfamiliar philosopher. What they are probably not prepared to have to overcome, is the additional effort required to just overcome the circumstantial unfamiliarity.

For this reason, one might decide to strongly alter the text, in order to substitute the background assumptions with ones more familiar to the contemporary reader. This substitution may regard minor details, e.g., the substitution of “Devadatta” with “John Smith” as the placeholder for whoever a person, or the inclusion of pronouns, copulae, punctuation and other elements which can be deduced out of the context or of the literary usage of scholastic Sanskrit. I have been generous in making implicit linguistic units explicit, but I did not dare translating proper names and terms referring to realia and to culturally specific elements into more familiar ones. This is because I want to create a reliable translation of the SM that is readable for at least some decades —also given the fact that I do not foresee new translations
of the SM being prepared in the short- and mid-term. Furthermore, I did not want to limit my assumed readership to European readers, and I am not sure that “John Smith” will remain the standard way of expressing the same thing as the Sanskrit Devadatta for all future and remote readers.

Coming to philosophical unfamiliarity, there are again two kinds of it. On the one hand, there is the unfamiliarity of the main thesis one is reading about, in the present case, the idea of aikaśāstrya. On the other hand, there is the unfamiliarity of other philosophical ideas being mentioned only in passing. In the former case I believe I can expect the reader to be patient enough to tolerate some Sanskrit words and some translations sounding alien,
and give themselves enough time to understand what is being discussed. In the latter case, by contrast, I would like to provide the reader with enough information to go forward with the text without having to engage deeply with each of the ideas and theories being mentioned in it without extensive explanations. This means, that in a chapter focusing on the instrument of knowledge called śabda, I might expect the reader to bear with my complicated translation of it as `linguistic communication as an instrument of knowledge’, whereas I will not hesitate to translate anumāna just as `inference’ and adding a word of caution in, e.g., a footnote only. Vice versa, I would translate śabda just as `testimony’ (with a word of caution in, e.g., a footnote) while translating the chapter on anumāna by a thinker of the Nyāya school.

If this principle is followed, a reader will receive a lot information about some key terms and only minimal information about less relevant ones. How can one organise this information so that a reader can find all the information they need to go forward with the main thesis while understanding enough of the other philosophical ideas mentioned?

For this purpose, one needs more than just a reader-friendly translation. One might decide among at least three options:

  1. Adding extensive comments in footnotes or endnotes (as it has been done in Preisendanz 1994)
  2. Adding the same comments within the text in separate paragraphs, perhaps in smaller font size (as it has been done in Taber 2005)
  3. Adding the same comments in an extended introduction (as it has been done in Bilimoria 1988)

The choice partly depends on one’s target readers. Philologists are more likely to appreciate the first solution, whereas the latter two are more likely to appeal to a public of more general readers, who might be more interested in the philosophical content than in the text itself. In this book, I adopt the third model (as I did already in Freschi 2012), although I will recur to the first one whenever the text demands a punctual explanation of a specific point having little bearing with its major concerns.

A specific paragraph needs to be dedicated to the use of parentheses and brackets. I used parentheses:

  1. to indicate which Sanskrit word I am translating in specific cases (i.e., while introducing for the first time the translation of a technical term, or whenever a term has to be understood in an unexpected way).
  2. to insert short explanations which are needed to understand a specific point of the text and cannot therefore be postponed in an explanatory footnote nor advanced in an introductory study.

As for square-brackets, I used them to insert words which were not present in the Sanskrit original and which could not be directly inferred on its basis. In other words, I would not put “I” in “I am going” within brackets if this translated gacchāmi, since the first-person subject is obviously present in the verb form. I also did not put within brackets obvious complements, such as “sacrifice” while translating sacrifice’s names such as darśapūrṇamāsau or citrā as `the full- and new-moon sacrifices’ and `the citrā sacrifice’. By contrast, I used brackets to highlight for the reader that a certain concept is not actually found in the text, so as to make them aware of the fact that I am suggesting an interpretation of it. For instance, God’s attribute vimuktipriya (within the opening verses of the SĀṬ) literally means `who is fond of liberation’. I rendered it as `He who wants [people to achieve] liberation’.
I also use brackets to introduce identifications of speakers.

Comments from fellow translators and/or readers of philosophical texts from afar welcome!

(Cross posted on the Indian Philosophy Blog. Read there some very interesting comments).

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Veṅkaṭanātha’s śāstric style in the Seśvaramīmāṃsā

Veṅkaṭanātha follows the standard śāstric style when it comes to the
general way of asking questions, discussing answers, and of providing
rationales for each claim.

To that, he adds his command, evident in his non-śāstric works, of figurative language, so that the dry style of śāstric reasoning gets populated by powerful metaphors, like that of scholars clinging to a Rahu or to a Kabandha kind of Veda only.1 Other metaphors are even more difficult to decipher (e.g., “butt by the horns of the Prābhākaras’ head” (SM 1971, end of p. 86)), since we lack their original context and perhaps also the pragmatic context of an actual debate.

Similarly, Veṅkaṭanātha’s style, though often similar to Rāmānuja’s one, is terser. There are more compounds, often built of more members, possibly because Veṅkaṭanātha presupposes some familiarity with basic tenets of Rāmānuja and other authors, and summarises them in a handy compound, like a contemporary scholar would do by just referring to, e.g., “Hume’s view on religion” or “the liar paradox”. Finally, Veṅkaṭanātha’s poetical inclination makes him at times choose to use uncommon words (e.g., dārḍhya, present both in the SM and in the ŚD 3) in what seems like a conscious choice to be expressive and to have his readers pause and consider what he is saying.

Veṅkaṭanātha comes back to the same topics in several of his śāstric works and at times repeats the same metaphors (e.g., comparing in SM and ŚD 3 the unitary teaching of Pūrva and Uttara Mīmāṃsā to a building done by more than one person, but still unitary). Nonetheless, in most cases the focus of the argument varies, possibly in accordance with the target readership and the general agenda of the work. Metaphors can therefore become less cryptic by looking at cross-references in Veṅkaṭanātha’s works. Arguments, however, are neither verbatim repeated, nor conceptually reproduced, but rather adapted to a new context and
reshaped in it. Consequently, the parallel passages from other works by Veṅkaṭanātha are interesting, but not really significant to reconstruct the actual reading of a given passage in the SM.

Any comment on 14th c. philosophical Sanskrit is welcome!

  1. Rahu is a demon who has only a head without a body, whereas Kabandha is a demon consisting of only a body, without a head. Thus, a Rahu-like Mīmāṃsā is a Mīmāṃsā focusing only on the “head” of the Vedas, i.e., the Upaniṣads, whereas a Kabandha-like Mīmāṃsā is a Mīmāṃsā focusing only on the “body” of the Vedas, i.e., the Brāhmaṇas. Neither can be complete and Veṅkaṭanātha suggests, by contrast, an
    ekaśāstra approach.↩︎
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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?