At the beginning of his Seśvaramīmāṃsā, Veṅkaṭanātha tries to synthetise what he (and Rāmānuja) calls Pūrva and Uttara Mīmāṃsā, with the further addition of the Devatā Mīmāṃsā.
In this connection he needs to address an apparent divergence, namely that between the siddha and sādhya interpretation of the Veda. In other words: Does the Veda always convey something to be done? Or does it always convey something established? The unity of the three Mīmāṃsās and of the Veda as their basis does not allow for a different interpretation of the statements in the Upaniṣads and in the Brāhmaṇas.

Veṅkaṭanātha cites Rāmānuja in order to show that there is no real opposition and that the sādhya-aspect is parasitical upon a siddha one. The example he reuses from Rāmānuja is that of taking action in regard to a hidden treasure: One starts acting only after having known that the treasure is really there. Thus, the sādhya element (taking action) depends on the siddha one (the acquired cognition of something existing).

At this point he also quotes from anoter Vaiṣṇava author, namely Parāśara Bhaṭṭa. His Bhagavadguṇadarpaṇa is a commmentary on the Viṣṇusahasranāma and here comes the quote:

bhagavadguṇadarpaṇe hi phalopāyaṃ prastutyoktam “sa ca siddhaḥ sādhyaḥ sālambanarūpaś ca. siddhas tv ārādhyamānatayā phalapradā devatā” ityādi.

For, in the Bhagavadguṇadarpaṇa (by Parāśara Bhaṭṭa) after having raised the topic of the instrument to the result it is said: “And this (tool to the result) is established (i.e., it is the deity), it is to be established (i.e., it is the karman) and it has the form of being with a support (ālambana).”

What is the sālambanarūpa ‘having the form of being with a support’? This last specification seems to refer to the brahman, since it is the missing part, perhaps in the sense that the brahman is the support (i.e., the culmination) of everything else. In this way, Veṅkaṭanātha would also interpret Parāśara Bhaṭṭa as supporting the idea of the threefold Mīmāṃsāśāstra.

However, a further enigma regards the reading of the text itself. All manuscripts read sa ca siddhaḥ sādhyālambanarūpaś ca. Does it mean that there was only a bipartition and not a tripartition, i.e., the tool for the result could be siddha or have a sādhya support? This seems like a plausible reading, but why would have then the editor of the 1971 edition emended the text as reproduced above? Did he do it according to the published text of the Bhagavadguṇadarpaṇa?

Do readers know the relevant passage of the Bhagavadguṇadarpaṇa? (I failed to locate it).

The final round-table tried to extract some general conclusions of the three-days discussion:

STEP 1. Should we use European categories at all?
Most of the art-historians and some of the philologists among us suggested just to refrain from using European categories such as Renaissance. They influence their users with unneeded assumptions and offer no concrete advantage. One of the philologists suggested therefore a 20–30 ys moratorium in the use of such categories.

Most other scholars, however, rather agreed on the need to use (also) European categories. In a beautiful simile, a musicologist explained that our categories are unavoidable and we should rather be aware of them and careful in their use: “One of the practices in ethnomusicology is to transcribe music that is traditionally transmitted orally into European staff notation in order to preserve and convey the music being discussed. However, it became apparent fairly early in the history of the discipline that by transcribing music that is not based on concepts in European art music into staff notation, the music thus conveyed was altered substantially. The categories and concepts through which we understand European art music are not necessarily significant in the music of other cultures, but it is almost impossible to bypass them as they become part of the way that those trained in European art music then perceive music”.

STEP 2: Careful and self-conscious use of “Renaissance”
In order to use the term and concept of “Renaissance”, we need a working definition of it. The following working definition has been therefore suggested (notes on each word follow):

What does Renaissance mean? An efflorescence prompted among a group of people by a revival of the past after an interruption.
An efflorescence is needed, since a revivalistic movement not leading to any new outburst in the arts, literature, philosophy, etc. cannot be labelled “Renaissance”.
It is difficult to define how many people make “a group”, but there needs to be a movement, not just a few connected individuals not gaining momentum.
The rupture element is also needed, otherwise there is just continuity. In other words, each generation is quite naturally inspired by the preceding one, but a Renaissance is characterised by the fact that one seeks inspiration from a more distant past. This past needs to be real (not mythical*), but not the immediately preceding one (otherwise it is just continuity). The past must therefore be felt to have been dormant for a while. Further, the appeal to be the past must be something one is aware of, something deliberate and intentional (otherwise, again, there is just continuity) and usually something the audience is also aware of. Therefore, one needs a golden age period which is specifically located and gives inspiration for a new efflorescence.
Please note that in the case of performative arts we don’t really know whether the elements we go back to were really existing, since we don’t have visual or audio recordings (as pointed out by LPe).
Why can’t the past be just a mythical one? Readers who are familiar with South Asia will for instance be reminded of the omnipresent hints at the lunar dynasty (virtually each king claims to descend from it). However, we don’t have any real artefacts we can look back to in the case of the lunar dynasty; there is no lunar poetry, no lunar painting, no lunar capitals.

STEP 3. Beware of the political element
As highlighted by AP, CF and others, the use of the term “Renaissance” is not value-neutral. By saying that something is a “Renaissance”, one is often issuing a statement of value. Nor can scholars forget that this is already happening in front of our eyes, with the term “Renaissance” appropriated by various groups, usually for controversial political purposes (as discussed, for instance, in BL’s speech). Thus, we don’t want to lean back in our armchairs and issue verdicts about Renaissances in the world, but nor can we just abjure our scholarly responsibility while others are issuing these verdicts already, for non-scholarly purposes.

STEP 4. Should we add also some specific elements to the operative definition above?
The main problem is finding a balance between a precise definition (a vague definition is just useless) and a too-narrow one. Thus, the following criteria are, as stressed by EM, sufficient, but not necessary conditions. Renaissance(s) are complex phenomena, but they may entail one or the other elements between individuality, secularism, knowledge circulation (CP) and the formation of a Canon (the last addition is due to LPa). Other possible ingredients for Renaissance(s) are economic prosperity, as well as a dynamic society and possibly also religious changes.

STEP 5. Why should we use the label and concept “Renaissance”?
I personally think that our use of this term and concept should not be part of a hegemonic discourse, but rather meant as a tool to ask new questions.
RK for instance suggested looking at the function of these and similar terms (“awakening” in the so-called Bengali Renaissance, for instance) in the settings in which they were used.

What do readers think? Shall we speak of “Renaissances” in the plural? And what does this entail?

I would like to know whether there is a similar term in Indian philosophy (sanskrit) for ‘Intelligence’. Can we equate it with the term prajñānam?

The problem with such questions (I do not know about you, but I often receive them), is that they are based on an atomic concept of sentences, as if there were a 1:1 correspondence among concepts and words and among language 1 and language 2. This theory has long been superseded both in linguistics (see Saussure’s discussion of how not even “tree” can be easily translated) and in translation theories. Moreover, as a scholar of Mīmāṃsā, I tend to imagine that the contribution of each word in a sentence is at least also a result of the contributions of the other words in the same sentence.

Thus, at least in case of philosophical concepts, one cannot focus on a single term, i.e., on a “dictionary approach”, but rather on what Umberto Eco calls the encyclopedic approach, i.e., offering a broader definition instead of a 1:1 translation. Moreover, each discussion of a (European) philosophical term needs to be preceded by an analysis of the term itself. Ideally, one should reconstruct it, too, through an encyclopedic approach (what does “X” entail? in which contexts is it used?).

In the case of “intelligence”, prajñā (not prajñāna) is often used, even more so in Mahāyāna texts, for “wisdom”, it can mean also “discrimination” and can therefore be compared to “intelligence”. I would, however, rather suggest buddhi, which stands for one’s ability to engage intellectually, especially because it does not have the sapiential aspect of prajñā and because buddhimat `having buddhi‘ can often be used in contexts in which in English one would speak of “intelligent” people. Another possibility would be prekṣā, again because of the use of prekṣāvat in order to define people who are able to consider things before deliberating.

What do readers think? How do you conceive “intelligence” in Sanskrit?

Cross-posted on the Indian Philosophy blog

ato ‘syā na meyaḥ kaścid api dharmo ‘sti. ato nirdhūtanikhilabhedavikalpanirdharmaprakāśamātraikarasā kūṭasthanityā saṃvid evātmā paramātmā ca. yathāha yānubhūtir ajāmeyānantātmā iti. saiva ca vedāntavākyatātparyabhūmir iti (ĀS, pp. 29–30 of the 1942 edition)

Therefore this (consciousness) has no characteristic as its knowable content. Therefore, this very consciousness is eternal, uniform and it consists of light-only, without characteristics, in which all conceptualisations of difference have been dissolved. This consciousness alone is the self (ultimately identical with the single brahman, but illusory identified as one’s own self) and the supreme self (i.e., the brahman). As it has been said: ”That experience (i.e., consciousness) is unborn, cannot become a knowledge content, it is endless, it is the self”*. And this alone is the ultimate meaning (tātparya) of the Upaniṣads’ sentences.

The quote within the passage (yānubhūtir ajāmeyānantātmā) could be from Vimuktātman’s Iṣṭasiddhi (1.1: yānubhūtir ajāmeyānantānandātmavigrahā |
mahadādijaganmāyācitrabhittiṃ namāmi tām ||).*

Yāmuna’s description seems fair to me. Do readers more expert in Advaita agree?

*I am grateful to Anand Venkatkrishnan for his help in identifying this quote.

dvīpe badarīkāmiśre bādarāyaṇam acyutam | parāśarāt satyavatī putraṃ lebhe parantapam ||

In the island mixed with (i.e., endowed with) Badarikā (jujube) trees, out of Parāśara, Satyavatī [the mother of Vyāsa] begot a child, a destroyer of foes, Bādarāyana, the imperishable.

Unlike with the previous verses about Bādarāyaṇa, all coming from the Mahābhārata, Veṅkaṭanātha does not mention his source in this case. Do readers have every encountered this verse?

As some readers will know already, a workshop on postcolonial Indian philosophy will take place in Vienna at the end of September. It will be closed by a round table and I started thinking about the questions I would like to discuss. Suggestions by the readers are welcome.:

1. Is Raghuramaraju right in saying that Indian philosophers focus too much on their ancestors (classical period) and too little on their predecessors (18th–20th c.)?
2. What could be concretely done to let more people engage in postcolonial Indian philosophy?
3. Is this goal part of the general enterprise of creating more centres for the study of global philosophy or are there specific peculiarities conencted to postcolonial Indian philosophy only?
4. What are the concrete advantages of engaging with modern and contemporary Indian philosophy for philosophers? And for Sanskritists?

bādarāyaṇasya mīmāṃsāpradhānāṃśabhūtaśārīrakasūtrakṛtatvena nyāyasiddhārthe ‘nuvidheyavacanatvañ ca mahābhāratādiprasiddham.

That is:

It is also well known in the Mahābhārata and in other [works] that —insofar as Bādarāyaṇa authored the Śārīrakasūtra (i.e., the Vedāntasūtra or UMS), which is the main part of the (unitary) Mīmāṃsā [system]— [in these sūtras] he expresses [in the UMS] what has to be conformed to (anuvidheya) in regard to [each] content established through rules (nyāya) (in the PMS).

In other words, Bādarāyaṇa set the interpretive principles in the UMS. The interpretation of the PMS needs to follow them. nyāya should refer to the Mīmāṃsā rules. Yet, I am not sure of my translation nyāyasiddhārthe ‘nuvidheyavacanatvam. Do readers have any suggestion?