Kumārila also targets the belief in a Lord akin to the one defended by rational theology, both in Europe and in South Asia, again because this leads to contradictions. Kumārila explains that there is no need of such a Lord in order to explain the creation of the world, since there is no need to adduce further evidence in order to justify the world as it is now (i.e., existing), whereas one would need to adduce a strong external evidence to justify everything contradicting the world as we know it. Therefore, the continuous presence of the world becomes the default status and the theist has the burden of the proof and needs to be able to establish independently of his religious belief that there has been a time when the world did not exist. Similarly, Kumārila shows that the idea of a Lord who is at the same time all-mighty and benevolent is self-contradictory, since if the Lord where really all-might, he would avoid evil, and if he tolerates it, then he is cruel. If one says that evil is due to karman or other causes, Kumārila continues, then this shows that there is no need to add the Lord at all as a further cause and that everything can be explained just on the basis of karman or any other cause.

Are Kumārila’s criticisms also targeted at the idea of an impersonal and non-dual brahman? Kumārila does not explicitly address the issue of the possible distinction between one and the other target. However, a few scant hints may help readers. In a fragment from his lost Bṛhaṭṭīkā preserved in the work of a Buddhist opponent (the Tattvasaṅgraha), Kumārila speaks of deities as being vedadeha, i.e., ‘embodied in the Veda’ (so Yoshimizu 2008, fn. 78). In a verse of the TV, he says that they are ṛgvedādisamūheṣu […] pratiṣṭhitāḥ, i.e., ‘who reside in the Ṛgveda and all other [Vedic scriptures]’ (Yoshimizu 2007b, p. 221). Does this mean that Kumārila was accepting a conception of deities inhabiting the Vedas? I discussed the idea with a colleague who just said that the verses must be interpolated.

What do readers think? Was there local atheism in ancient India?

See also Yoshimizu’s comment to my post on Bhavanātha.

1. The verse said to be extracted from the Bṛhaṭṭīkā in the Mānameyoda‘s section on arthāpatti (discussed here)
2. Four verses on arthāpatti attributed by Śālikanātha* to the Vārttikakāra (i.e., Kumārila) but not found in his Ślokavārttika

All these texts agree, among other things, on a major distinction between inference and arthāpatti, namely the fact that the vyāpti, the ‘invariable concomitance’ between what will be known and its logical reason, is already at the epistemic disposal of the knower before the anumāna, whereas in the case of the arthāpatti the knower, so to say, discovers it “on the go”, at the time of reaching the result of the arthāpatti. In other words, one would not have been able to say beforehand that there is an invariable concomitance between the set of people who, being alive, are not at home, and the set of people who are out of their home, until one had reached the conclusion that Devadatta must be outside.

For further details, see Yoshimizu 2007 (in Preisendanz (ed.) Expanding and Merging Horizons).

*I am obliged to Kiyotaka Yoshimizu who kindly alerted me to these verses.

“If you can find honey on a tree nearby, why going to the mountains?”
arke cen madhu vindeta, kim artham parvataṃ vrajet

Beside their specific commitment to some hermeneutic metarules regarding the linguistic and prescriptive nature of the Vedas, Mīmāṃsā authors also strictly adhere to the principle of parsimony (lāghava). This principle says that one should avoid unnecessary effortsand it applies to different fields. For instance, if a ritual prescription says that one should sacrifice “animals” (in plural), one should sacrifice the lowest number of animals satisfying the requiremenet of the prescription, namely three (two animals would be expressed in Sanskrit with the dual number). Similarly, unnecessary speculations should be avoided, if an easy explanation of a given phenomenon is available, as with Ockham’s Razor.

The principle of lāghava is also differently expressed. In the Śābarabhāṣya ad 1.2.4, this is expressed as in the title of this post, with a further hemistich explaining that there is no point in making further efforts once the result can be easily achieved, but the principle is omnipresent in Mīmāṃsā. For instance, it rules the way Mīmāṃsakas apply the instruments of knowledge to understand what is connected with a given prescription (from śruti onwards, see PMS 3.3.14), with the general idea that unless there is a serious reason, one goes for the easiest solution (e.g., what is directly enjoined overrules what one could understand out of context). Careful readers will have already noted that this is the same approach which is detectable in Kumārila’s most well-known epistemological innovation, namely his theory of the self-validity of cognition (svataḥ prāmāṇya). There, once again, unless and until the opposite is proved, each cognition should be accepted as valid, and there is no requirement to always look for further confirmations.

What is the impact of the principle of parsimony on the overall Mīmāṃsā philosophy? In my opinion, it hints at the fact that what runs the risk of being seen as a direct realism is instead a system based on truth-as-consistence more than on truth-as-correspondence.

I am grateful to Kiyotaka Yoshimizu for having discussed the topic of kalpanālāghava with me (all mistakes in this post are only mine).

On Kumārila’s theory of self-validity, see this post, and this one. On the hermeneutic principles in Mīmāṃsā, see this post.

The following elements had been discussed at the round table after the panel on reuse (about which see this announcement and these comments right at the end of it) at the IABS conference:

• genre: it seems that philosophy is a special case, in which literality of quotations is especially evaluated, whereas commentaries on religious texts are mid-way (as shown by Jowita Kramer) and religious and ritual texts reuse more freely (as shown by Cathy Cantwell). Petra Kieffer-Pülz observed that genre plays no role in Pāli literature (whereas time does, see immediately below). Paul Hackett noticed that within tantric literature of all religious trends, reuse is so extensive, that even chapters’ numbers which make no sense in the new environment may be copied.
• authorship: unexpectedly, even a strong concept of authorship, as the one common in kāvya does not prevent a free reuse, since the readership still regards authored texts as it regards other kind of texts (as shown by Camillo Formigatti using the example of the avadāna-collections)
• time: surprisingly enough, Petra Kieffer-Pülz’ findings concerning Pāli harmonise with my own ones on Sanskrit and confirm that after a certain century, authors tend to be much more specific as for their sources, explicitly mentioning author’s and work’s names. When does this change take place? Petra suggested “after the 14th c.” in Pāli literature. I would say even before that in Sanskrit literature, that is, around the 11th c. (see however below, fn *, for the proposal that the turn can be traced back already to Dignāga). Further views on this topic: Philipp Maas noted that Vācaspati, in his commentary on the Yogaśāstra clearly feels the need to name his sources, sometimes by inventing names if he does not know them. Referring to an even earlier date, Charles DiSimone noted that Śāntideva quotes up to five authorities on the same topic (thus showing that “name dropping” was important, I would say).

This leads to some further important points, namely:

• reasons for not naming one’s sources: Petra Kieffer-Pülz preliminarly observed that the lack of naming one’s sources cannot be interpreted as due to the reliance on oral instructions, since in the Pāli milieu books were indeed used and there are even records of libraries. Cristina Pecchia noted that Dharmakīrti is consistently referred to as ācārya among his commentators and that the main authors would have been immediately present to their relevant audience. Another person (unknown to me, unfortunately, but if you recognise yourself, please add a comment below) highlighted the fact that we must imagine that there was a shared repertoire, especially in the case of texts to be performed (once the performative stage was ended, one needed to fill the names, etc.). Cathy Cantwell, last, observed that no naming of the source is needed if the text has the status of a revelation, nor if it is reused almost unconsciously, since it has become a part of oneself, after having memorised it at a very early age. This last comment fits with my own findings regarding the fact that one does not name authors in one’s own school (see my Introduction in the special issue of the JIPh I edited).
• “Forge” of textual material: This topic has been dealt with in connection with Madhva (see Mesquita’s books on this topic) and with the extraordinary fact that some authors felt the need to forge new quotes instead of using the well-accepted device of over-interpreting extant ones. It is interesting to note that, as observed by Petra Kieffer-Pülz, already in the Aṭṭhakathā literature there are accusations to people who would have “forged” sentences. A further interesting indication of the awareness that forgery was not admitted is the justification of new Buddhist rules or part of rules by attributing them to the Buddha and (implicitly?) saying that ‘Had the Buddha been alive, he would have said that’. UPDATE: This point is discussed in Kieffer-Pülz’ book Verlorene Gaṇṭhipadas, Vol. I, p. 252 and pp. 490–492 (thanks to Petra for pointing it out!).

Can you think of further elements you would take into account? Further applications of the elements we highlighted? For instance, we did not have time to discuss about geographic differences, nor about the impact of multilinguism (which had been dealt with by Charles DiSimone in his talk) on the accuracy of textual reuse.

*Kiyotaka Yoshimizu has kindly reminded me of an article by Larry McCrea in this volume) on how Dignāga’s way of referring literally to his opponents has changed at once the Indian way of doing philosophy and of engaging with one’s opponents. Could Dignāga be the source of such later developments?

For my first post on the same round table, see here. For the complete series of posts on the IABS, see here. Please remember that these are only my first impressions and that all mistakes are mine and not the speakers’ ones.

A summary of likes and dislikes of my readers and colleagues can be read here (don’t forget to add your own favs).

• is the example of the presence of horns as leading to “non-horse” an instance of the way apoha works (as with Yoshimizu, which supports in this way his analysis of Dignāga’s procedure as entailing a compositional analysis) or just an example about an inference, which works in a way similar as the apoha, i.e., does not need to exclude elements one by one (as with Kataoka, who thus supports his claim that Dignāga does not need any positive postulation).

More details on each reconstruction can be found below:

Pramāṇasamuccaya and svavṛtti 5.43 (Pind’s reconstruction)

yac coktam <ādyapratyayo> nāstīti, iṣṭisiddhir anāditvāt. [43a]

[…]. yasya tu […] na ca śakyaṃ jātimad vyāptum, na ca […]. yad apy uktaṃ pratyayavṛttir eva nāsti, tad apy ayuktam.

sāmānyena nirākṛteḥ. [43b]

na hi so ’nyāṃ jātiṃ pratidravyam apohate, kiṃ tarhi vyavacchedyavivakṣayaikena sāmānyadharmeṇa. uktaṃ cātra vijātīye ’darśanamātreṇānumānam. tavaiva tv eṣa doṣaḥ. yadi svajātīyavyāptyā <varteta, vyāpyasyānantyaṃ syāt>. tasmād yathā <viṣāṇitvād anaśva ity vacane ’śve viṣāṇitvādarśanena tadvyavacchedānumānam>, na tu <karkādīn> pratyekam apohate, <nāpy ekaikeṣu gavādiṣu vartate. tavāpi vyāvṛttyanuvṛttibuddhimatam>. tathā <cā>tra nyāyaḥ.

Kataoka

tavaiva tv eṣa doṣaḥ. yadi svajātīyavyāptyā <varteta, vyāpyasyānantyaṃ syāt>. tasmād yathā <viṣāṇitvād anaśva ity vacane ’śve viṣāṇitvādarśanena tad- vyavacchedānumānam>, na tu <karkādīn> pratyekam apohate, <nāpy ekaikeṣu gavādiṣu vartate. tavāpi vyāvṛttyanuvṛttibuddhimatam>. tathā <cā>tra nyāyaḥ.

NB: yathā connected with tathā: like it works in the case of inference, so here. Thus, yathā only introduces a diverging example, namely one about inference. atra means “like in the case of inference, so in our case (of apoha)”.

Yoshimizu

tavaiva [Mādhava] tv eṣa doṣaḥ. yadi svajātīyavyāptyā <varteta, vyāpyasyā- nantyaṃ syāt>. tasmād yathā <viṣāṇitvād anaśva ity vacane ’śve viṣāṇitvā- darśanena tadvyavacchedānumānam>, na tu <karkādīn> pratyekam apohate, <nāpy ekaikeṣu gavādiṣu vartate. tavāpi vyāvṛttyanuvṛttibuddhimatam>.

tathā <cā>tra nyāyaḥ.

NB: yathā connected with what precedes, since it is part of a larger quotation of Dignāga’s previous text. tathā out of the quote and disconnected.

The quote is found in Muni Jambuvijaya’s edition of the Jain Dvādaśāra Nayacakra:

yathāha dvādaśaśatikāyām: yad apy uktam aprasaktasya kimartham pratiṣedhaḥ iti naivaitat pratiṣedhamātram ucyate, kintu tasya vastunaḥ kaścid bhāgo ‘rthāntaranivṛttyā loke gamyate yathā viṣaṇitvād anaśva iti.

atra would thus mean, according to Yoshimizu, “here, in this treatise [like in the Dvādaśaśatikā, whence the quote come from]”. This would also explain why in the PS Dignāga did not need to dwell at length on componential analysis, because he could rely on what he had said already in the Dvādaśaśatikā.

What do you think? The yathā-tathā sequence seems appealing, all the more because a tasmāt separates the previous sentence from yathā, unlike in the reused text, but the reused text seems to point to a stricter relation between the yathā-clause and what precedes it.

These are only my reconstructions of Pind’s, Yoshimizu’s and Kataoka’s thought as represented in, respectively, Pind’s PhD thesis, Yoshimizu’s paper discussed here and Kataoka’s papers presented at the last IABS and IDhK conferences. All mistakes are mine. For the first part of my reconstruction, see here.

Kei Kataoka, Ole Holten Pind and Kiyotaka Yoshimizu have disagreed on how to reconstruct the sequence of opponents and siddhantin in PS 5. In the following, I will deal with 5.41–42 and I will only add some furhter questions to the ones they have listed already, in the vague hope that clear questions contribute more than dogmatic answers to the advancement of a discipline.

Let me start with PS 5.41ab. Here Dignaga has:

sāsnādidarśanād gopratyayaḥ.

Who is speaking here? To whom should this view be attributed?
Jinendrabuddhi starts his commentary with:

tatra hi vaibhā{g}ikenoktam (see below for the uncertainties concerning this reading)

Pind and Yoshimizu consequently attribute PS 5.41ab to a certain “Vaibhāgika”, whereas Kataoka attributes it to the Sāṅkhya Mādhava, who would there be rephrasing Dignāga’s view.
In favour of his view, Kataoka can point to the fact that the Tibetan translation of Jinendrabuddhi’s commentary does not have tatra hi vaibhāgikenoktam but rather translates *vaināśikena, which could refer to Mādhava’s fame of “destroyer” of the Sāṃkhya system. Furthermore, vaibhāgika would be an absolute hapax. Last, Kataoka kindly informed me (and the audience at the IDhK conference in Heidelberg) that the manuscript of the Sanskrit version of Jinendrabuddhi, which would be the only evidence in favour of vaibhāgikena, does not clearly confirm it.

Jinendrabuddhi then adds:

atra sāṅkhyena pratividhānam āha

This is a univocal reference to a Sāṅkhya author, possibly Mādhava. If Kataoka is right, both passages are then attributed to Mādhava, but the first one is a rephrasal of Dignāga by Mādhava, whereas the second is Mādhava’s critique to Dignāga.

Last should come Dignāga’s reply. But where does it exactly start?

PS 5.41–42 read as follow in Pind’s reconstruction:

sāsnādidarśanād gopratyayaḥ yo ‘yam udāhṛtaḥ |
so viruddho bhavanmatyā bhinnāpohyas tu te mithaḥ || 41 ||
so ‘napekṣa ity etat tu svavikalpavirmitam |
nirapoham […] || 42 ||

Kataoka:
sāsnādidarśanād gopratyayaḥ: Mādhava
yo ‘yam udāhṛtaḥ so viruddho, bhavan[=Sāṅkhya]matyā, bhinnāpohyas tu te mithaḥ: Dignāga. bhavanmatyā is not connected to viruddhaḥ and it means that the example has been only provisionally introduced from the point of view of Sāṅkhya. 41d is Dignāga’s authentic siddhānta, which follows in v.42.

Yoshimizu:
sāsnādidarśanād gopratyayaḥ: Vaibhāgika
so ‘yam udāhṛtaḥ so viruddho, bhavan[=Dignāga’s]matyā: Mādhava’s criticism of Dignāga
bhinnāpohyas tu te mithaḥ: Mādhava
Yoshimizu thus stresses the importance of the tu as indicating a change of speaker.
v. 42: Dignāga. Again, the tu is stressed as the key element to understand that a new discussant is now speaking.

If Kataoka is right, Dignāga only provisionally accepted that one grasps a cow by means of dew-lap etc., whereas in fact he never moved from the absolute exclusive/negative nature of the apoha theory, which does not admit any positive entity, be it a cow or a dew-lap.

If Yoshimizu (or Pind, since if I am not wrong their views tend to be quite close) is right, Dignaga does indeed accept that one grasps a cow by means of a dewlap, etc. (Yoshimizu suggested in his 2011 article discussed here that this implies a componential analysis and not the real existence of dew-lap, etc.).

These are only my reconstructions of Pind’s, Yoshimizu’s and Kataoka’s thought as represented in, respectively, Pind’s PhD thesis, Yoshimizu’s paper discussed here and Kataoka’s papers presented at the last IABS and IDhK conferences. All mistakes are mine.

K. Yoshimizu shows passages of the Mahābhāṣya showing that the denotation of gauḥ is described as involving various elements, such as dewlap, horns, hooves, humpback. According to Yoshimizu, Dignāga maintains that in actual usage language users acknowledge the presence of this elements in order to recognise what is a cow (and their absence in order to recognise what is a non-cow). Yoshimizu says that is process is akin to what contemporary linguists call “componential analysis”. He quotes passages from Dignāga’s PS which apply it even to proper names (since also “Ḍitta” describes a set of qualities, such as being adulterine, having one-eye only, etc.).

Componential analysis cannot work, by contrast, for the “founder” of Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā, Kumārila Bhaṭṭa (who knew Dignāga and criticised his work), since he maintains that the universal “cowness” is directly perceivable and that this is what allows us to recognise a cow before we recognise its dewlap, etc. In this sense, the meaning of a word denotes, for Kumārila, a universal, and can only secondarily be analysed in its sense-components.

This leads Yoshimizu to a further question, namely, how can one perform an injunction, if this referes to a universal? One would never be able to bring either the universal cowness, nor all its instantiations (i.e., all cows) once one has been enjoined to “Bring the cow!”. Fortunately enough, the word “cow” in such a command refers to all individual cows, but one by one (so Kumārila in the TV). How is this possible? Because Kumārila distinguishes two elements in each prescription (what is uddeśyamāna and what is upādīyamāna*), which Yoshimizu equates to what contemporary linguists call “topic” and “comment”. The “comment” adds new information, whereas the “topic” is what we know already about. This part is only needed in order to understand what the comment is about. For instance: “cow” is “comment” and then “topic” in the next two sentences (the example is mine, no responsibility of Yoshimizu in any mistake it may contain):

“That one is my cow” (topic: “That one” (you already know about it since a gesture indicates it); comment: “my cow” (you did not know before the speaker had a cow))

“Bring the cow” (topic: “the cow” (you already know that the speaker has a cow, and which one it is); comment: “Bring [it]!”)

Once the “cow” is made into a “topic”, one knows already its number (in this case, singular) and can identify it easily. Thus, one does no longer need to bring all possible cows sharing the universal “cowness”.

Yoshimizu’s conclusion is that Kumārila leans towards pragmatics (for instance, he implements a topic-comment distinction which takes into account the pragmatic presuppositions implied in a certain linguistic act), whereas Dignāga implicitly presupposes some type of componential analysis.

A dewlap is not always sufficient as a probans to infer a cow

What do you think of the application of contemporary theories to classical Indian philosophy? Do they help or bewilder you?

More on Kataoka’s view of apoha can be read here If you are in Vienna and you want to discuss these topics with Yoshimizu, consider attending this workshop.

*On “topic” and “comment” applied to Mīmāṃsā linguistics one can also read Yoshimizu 2006, where the “comment” is equated to the vidheya

The paper elaborates on Yoshimizu 2007 (Festschrift Steinkellner), in which Yoshimizu discussed Kumārila’s view of the foundation of the validity of inference on the basis of a fragment from the Bṛhaṭṭīkā, of which only quotations in later texts are extant. Frauwallner (1962) had used the same fragment to prove that Kumārila had modified his view on inference from his younger work (the Ślokavārttika) to his later Bṛhaṭṭīkā, which was influenced by Dharmakīrti. Thus, Frauwallner suggested that the Bṛhaṭṭīkā must have been a later work by Kumārila and proposed the following sequence:

1. Kumārila’s Ślokavārttika, which shows acquaintance of Dignāga, but not of Dharmakīrti, and grounds inference on avinābhāva or vyāpti, invariable concomitance
2. Dharmakīrti’s logical work called Hetuprakaraṇa, showing that the sheer concomitance (avinābhāva) is not enough and one needs to ground inference on an ontologically given vyāpti, which he called niyama
3. Kumārila’s Bṛhaṭṭīkā, embracing niyama

niyama has an advantage over avinābhāva insofar as it includes a uni-directional relation (from the effect to the cause) and an enhanced degree of certainty, since it is based on ontology (in Dharmakīrti’s works: on either causality or identity, Yoshimizu stresses the fact that Kumārila does not embrace this partition).

Further, Yoshimizu, in contrast to Frauwallner, contends that the position found in the Bṛhaṭṭīkā represents an inner development of Kumārila’s position, in which he reaches a definition of valid inference autonomous from Dignāga’s. In the paper he will read in Heidelberg, Yoshimizu substantiates this claim through quotes from Kumārila’s intermediate work, namely the Tantravārttika, in which the term niyama is discussed within Mīmāṃsā contexts. This shows, Yoshimizu maintains, that the Bṛhaṭṭīkā fragment on niyama was the result of an inner development of Kumārila’s thought. This leads Yoshimizu to a final, interesting remark, namely that Kumārila was quite strict as for the validity of the Veda in its exclusive domain, namely dharma. However, he never went further to say that the Veda was the only means of knowledge, thus banning human reasoning altogether.

If Yoshimizu is right, should we imagine that Dharmakīrti has been influenced by Kumārila also in regard to the concept (and the terminology) of niyama?

These are just my thoughts on Yoshimizu’s paper. All mistakes are entirely mine. For my summaries of the IABS, see this post. For further posts on Kiyotaka Yoshimizu, see here.

Kei Kataoka presented his view of how apoha works in Dignāga. He first discussed the interpretation of it by several scholars (Hattori, Akamatsu, Yoshimizu) and then the criticism of this view by Tanizawa, a criticism which Kataoka himself endorses and which he sees foreshadowed by a Sāṅkhya opponent embedded in the Pramāṇasamuccaya, namely Mādhava. According to the first group, Kataoka maintains, we perceive some characteristics such as dewlap, and on this basis we can identify what cows are. Tanizawa and Mādhava, instead, observe that this procedure would contradict the negative nature of the apoha theory, since it would presuppose the existence of a recognisable universal, namely dewlap-ness, etc.

I will need to go back to Yoshimizu’s 2011 article, but I am not completely sure that the componential semantics he proposes (e.g., the componential analysis of ‘cow’ would have ‘bovine’ ‘adult’ and ‘female’ as its elements) needs to presuppose the existence of the corresponding universals. To me, it seemed that one could just more or less understand what a dewlap is and proceed on the basis of this preliminary understanding. In this case, one would avoid the petitio principii (anyonyāśraya) that is Kumārila’s main charge against Dignāga, namely: You cannot exclude non-cows unless you already know what a cow is. However, Kataoka —if I understood his answer correctly— suggests that Dignāga was not concerned with answering this possible charge, possibly because the absences were for him graspable and he did not feel the need to justify one’s grasping them.

(Let me repeat that this is just my impression of a part of Kataoka’s paper, which was surely much better than my short summary of it)