Tag Archives: Prabhākara

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Adhikāra and rights

As already observed, there is no straightforward equivalent to “rights” in Mīmāṃsā deontic (and this is normal and good, since the deontic townscape is not a given fact, but a human construct and is therefore differently articulated), but there are certainly functional equivalents covering parts of the semantic field of “rights”.

One of them is adhikāra. Possible differences:

  1. adhikāra is generally a vox media (you have the adhikāra to do X, which does not necessarily mean that X is a good thing), unlike “right” (where generally having the right to do X is a good thing).
  2. adhikāra might imply duty, whereas rights don’t (you may have the right to remain silent, and this does not imply that you ought to remain silent). For instance, for Prabhākara if you have the adhikāra to perform a given sacrifice, you also have the responsibility to carry it out. However, it is not so in Kumārila or Maṇḍana, where the additional obligation to perform fixed rituals descends from their fixedness (nityatva), not from the adhikāra, as proven by the fact that no such obligation follows in the case of elective rituals (kāmya).
  3. adhikāra is connected to ability (sāmarthya), whereas this does not apply to rights, which can instead ground the need of ability being ensured. For instance, if you have the right to go to school but cannot physically move, (in an ideal case) your government will provide you with the devices needed to let you attend school etc. By contrast, adhikāra presuppose ability, in the sense that unless there is ability to do X, there is no adhikāra to do it. Since adhikāra is a vox media, this might be a good thing after all. For instance, if you don’t have the adhikāra to do something difficult to get A, you will be allowed to do something easier instead. Please notice also that Śabara helpfully distinguishes the lack of an external (bahirbhūta) ability (sāmarthya), which is temporary and does not affect the adhikāra (for instance, you don’t lose your adhikāra if you temporarily run out of ghee or are too poor to perform a given sacrifice), and intrinsic (ātmavṛtti) ability (śakti), in the absence of which there is no adhikāra. Much to my disappointment, this distinction is not kept by later authors.
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Reconstructing the Mīmāṃsā townscape

I have been working for years on reconstructing the deontic landscape of Mīmāṃsā, but at this point I realise that “landscape” might be a misleading metaphor.

In fact, Mīmāṃsā authors were not just describing a natural scenario. They engineered a highly sophisticated system, with bridges connecting different actions and sewage systems to get rid of unwanted left-overs.

That’s why even though new Mīmāṃsā authors might change the flag on the top of the hill (as Maṇḍana did) or some particular aspect here and there, they were cautious not to jeopardise such a carefully engineered system.

For instance, when it comes to subordination, the only real options are Kumārila’s viniyoga system and Prabhākara’s upādāna. Other authors substantially follow the one or the other.

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Permissions for Prabhākara

Is it possible to command someone who is already inclined to act according to Prabhākara? 

Bṛhatī ad 6.1.1 says na pravṛttapravartane prayogaḥ āmantraṇādiṣu vyabhicārāt, literally: “[Exhortative endings] are not used to promote people who are already active, because of the deviant case (vyabhicāra) of invitations”. 

In fact, Prabhākara appears to believe that commands are always imparted on someone who is not yet active and who becomes active upon hearing them. The addressee of a command  desires something already and recognises themselves as the addressee through such desires (see Freschi 2012), but they are not active until they become enjoined.

Now, if Prabhākara means that active people are never promoted to act, why are āmantraṇas a good example? Orders (ājñā) are not used as a standard example because their being a clear case of promoting someone not already active had been attacked by the opponent in the previous line.

As for āmantraṇa, the situation with āmantraṇa is ambiguous, but Śālikanātha takes it as connected to a command uttered among peers (thus, it is not a clear case of a command uttered for people who are not already active). Moreover, what is the role of the vyabhicāra argument? How can a vyabhicāra argument be used to convince someone that something is *always* the case? A vyabhicāra can be used to show that it is incorrect to claim that “All As are B”, since there is at least one A that is not a B, but it can’t be used to corroborate “All As are B” by showing a further case of an A that is indeed B. In other words, why speaking of “vyabhicāra” and not of “yathāmantraṇeṣu” or the like if this was what he meant? The only possible explanation seems to be to think of āmantraṇādiṣu vyabhicārāt as “because the case of invitations, etc., deviates from the [opponent’s] claim”.  

Still, if it is impossible to command someone who is already inclined to act, how can Prabhākara make sense of permissions? When we are already about to light a cigarette and look around and ask whether it is OK and someone tells us “No problem, go ahead!”, isn’t the “go ahead” a command directed to someone who is already active? Could Prabhākara perhaps say that a command cannot enjoin someone who is already active because it would miss the apūrva element?

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Śālikanātha’s contribution

Śālikanātha is the main philosopher of the Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā school after Prabhākara himself.

In some sense, one could even say that he is more important than Prabhākara himself, since he is way more systematic than Prabhākara, and explores through his various thematic essays almost all topics commonly dealt with in Sanskrit philosophy. Moreover, he is certainly more influential than Prabhākara, since his works are regularly read and cited instead of the terse words of Prabhākara’s only extant work, the Bṛhatī.

Chronology
Like in the case of the relation between Kumārila and Prabhākara, Śālikanātha’s position in the history of Sanskrit philosophy needs further investigation. His systematisation of Prābhākara philosophy, answering (or trying to answer) all challenges coming from the Bhāṭṭa field is so thorough that no philosopher after him went back to Prabhākara alone without taking into account his explanations. For instance, no one went back to Prabhākara’s account of arthāpatti, independently of Śālikanātha’s reinterpretaion. All of Kumārila’s interpreters and commentators have been influenced by Śālikanātha and at times mutuated their siddhānta from Śālikanātha’s objections.
However, there is one author referring to Prābhākara ideas and not taking into account Śālikanātha’s points. This is Jayanta, who is also among the few authors whose dates are relatively settled (870–950 ca.). Thus, Śālikanātha either lived after Jayanta, or was not yet known at the time of Jayanta in Kaśmīr.

Agenda
As hinted at above, Śālikanātha tried to systematise Prabhākara by making an all-encompassing Prābhākara philosophy. In other words, he tried to stretch Prabhākara’s views way beyond what was more important to Prabhākara (such as deontic and hermeneutic issues) and to cover also ontology etc. He also tried to raise to the challenge produced by Kumārila by reinterpreting Prabhākara’s theory in a way apt to answer to Kumārila’s objection (for instance, by reconsidering the role of apūrva, by admitting smārita padārtha within the process of signification and by discussing the cognitive aspect of abhāva).

These are just some of the reasons that make it relevant and necessary to read and study Śālikanātha. Other reasons include his being a) philosophically intriguing (as certified even by his opponents, see above concerning Kumārila’s commentators reusing them); b) an enjoyable and elegant author.

(cross-posted on the Indian Philosophy Blog, where you can also read some interesting comments)

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How to define valid cognition if you are Śālikanātha (analysis of various criteria)?

Śālikanātha discusses the definition of a source of knowledge (pramāṇa) at the beginning of his Pramāṇapārāyaṇa and analyses various criteria.

First of all, he discusses the criterion of avisaṃvāditva ‘non deviation’ (used by Dharmakīrti and his school) and shows how this is not enough to exclude memory (smṛti). Dharmakīrti could exclude memory because it is conceptual, but this would exclude also inference (anumāna).

Next suggestion (again from Dharmakīrti’s school): using causal efficacy (arthakriyā) as criterion. But in this way memory should again be considered a source of knowledge, since it can be causally efficacious. One could say that, unlike in memory, in the case of inference there is a connection (though indirect) with the object. But this, again, applies to memory as well!

A new attempt is to say that a source of knowledge is identified insofar as it leads to know something unknown (aprāptaprāpaka), which is a criterion typical of Kumārila. A variant thereof is to say that it causes to act people who were previously inactive (pravartakatva), but this would lead to the fact that non-conceptual cognitions (nirvikalpa) would not be sources of knowledge, given that they cannot promote any action.

Why not using aprāptaprāpaka as criterion? Because this would not apply to the case of continuous cognitions (dhārāvāhikajñāna). These are cognitions like the ones originated out of continuously looking at the same object. These count, according to Śālikanātha, as sources of knowledge, but would not be such if the criterion of aprāptaprāmāṇaka were to be the defining one.

What about dṛḍha ‘sure’ as criterion, then?
Here Śālikanātha can give voice to the Prābhākara theory of knowledge. First of all, he asks, what would dṛḍha exclude? If it excludes doubt, then this is wrong, since there is no doubtful cognition. What we call ‘doubt’ is instead the sum of two distinct cognitions (readers might want to recall the fact that for the Nyāya school, doubt is a cognition in which two alternatives are exactly equally probably).
As for erroneous cognitions (bhrānti), these also don’t need to be excluded from the definition of knowledge, because there are no erroneous cognitions. What looks like an erroneous cognitions, is at most an incomplete one. For instance, mistaking mother-of-pearl for silver means rightly recognising a shining thing on the beach + remembering silver. The latter part is not knowledge, but just because it is memory. Śālikanātha similarly treats the case of jaundice and other perceptual errors.

His conclusion is a minimal definition of knowledge: pramāṇam anubhūtiḥ “knowledge is experience”.

(cross-posted on the Indian Philosophy blog, where you can also read some interesting comments)

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The role of the prescription to teach the Veda according to Prabhākara

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

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

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

अबाधितप्रत्ययोत्पत्तावनपेक्षत्वलक्षणप्रामाण्यस्य वक्ष्यमाणत्वाच्च

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

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

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The role of the prescription to learn the Veda

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

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Against arthāpatti as only technically distinguished from inference (in Śālikanātha)

Against arthāpatti as only technically distinguished from inference (Śālikanātha)

In contrast to his willingness to play down the differences with his Prābhākara opponents, Śālikanātha is quite straightforward in denying the understanding of arthāpatti, which he attributes to an anonymous opponent, and is clearly influenced by the Ślokavārttika’s treatment of the issue.
According to this opponent, the absence from home is the trigger insofar as it is itself thrown into doubt. Śālikanātha starts by asking how could this impossibility be conceived and comes with two possible options:

  1. It is impossible insofar as the absence of the one is invariably connected with the absence of the other.

  2. It is impossible insofar as the absence from home is impossible as long as one does not postulate the presence of Caitra outside.