The Mīmāṃsā school of Indian philosophy started as an atheist school since its first extant text, Jaimini’s Mīmāṃsā Sūtra. At a certain point in its history, however, it reinterpreted its atheist arguments as aiming only at a certain conception of god(s). In other words, it reinterpreted its atheism as being not a global atheism, but a form of local atheism, denying a certain specific form of god(s) and not any form whatsoever.
Tag Archives: Prabhākara
Reading and comparing theories on sentence-meaning (part 1)
The Mīmāṃsaka Śālikanātha is Prabhākara’s main interpreter, yet he is also an original thinker. How much of Śālikanātha’s anvitābhidhāna theory for sentence signification is already there in Prabhākara’s Bṛhatī? We will find out reading the Bṛhatī and comparing it with Śālikanātha’s commentary thereon and with Śālikanātha’s elaboration of the topic in his independent treatise, the Vākyārthamātṛkā, during this workshop.
Why should one study the meaning of the Veda? I.e., why studying Mīmāṃsā?
(It is hard to present your research program to the public)
At a certain point in the history of Mīmāṃsā (and, consequently, of Vedānta), the discussion of the reasons for undertaking the study of Mīmāṃsā becomes a primary topic of investigation. When did this exactly happen? The space dedicated to the topic increases gradually in the centuries, but Jaimini and Śabara don’t seem to be directly interested in it.
Proximity, semantic fitness and syntactic expectancy as criteria for the sentence meaning
Words (for the Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā authors) get connected into a complex sentence meaning through proximity (sannidhi), semantic fitness (yogyatā) and syntactic expectancy (ākāṅkṣā).
These three criteria correspond to the requirement of being uttered one after the other with no intervening time (unlike in the case of the words “a cow” and “runs” pronounced on two different days), being semantically fit to connect (unlike the words “watering” and “with fire”) and being linkable through syntactic expectancy (as in the case of a verb and its arguments).
It is in this connection noteworthy that the example of expectancy always refer to syntax rather than semantics and typically have a verb expecting a complement or vice versa.
The Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā authors also adopt the same criteria in order to rule the understanding of the sentence meaning out of the connected words and avoid the objections (mentioned above) about the fact that out of a random heap of words one would not know how to start to get to the sentence meaning.
Meanings of Words and Sentences in Mīmāṃsā
Mīmāṃsakas of both the Bhāṭṭa and the Prābhākara subschools refute the idea of a sphoṭa carrying the meaning and being different from what we experience, namely phonemes and words, since this contradicts the principle of parsimony and our common experience. Accordingly, they claim that phonemes really exist and that they together constitute words. They also subscribe to the idea that words convey word-meanings, and thus refute the Bhartṛharian holism, again because this idea is confirmed by common experience and common experience should be trusted unless there is a valid reason not to. In fact, human beings commonly experience that one needs to understand the words composing a sentence in order to understand its meaning.
The Natural Relation in Mīmāṃsā
Mīmāṃsā authors refute the Nyāya and Buddhist theory of a conventional relation and try to prove that nobody would ever be able to establish a linguistic convention without words, since any convention-maker would in turn need words to explain that a certain word X is to be connected with a certain meaning. It follows that, in order to avoid a circular regress, at some point one necessarily needs words whose relation with their meanings is not conventional. Later Nyāya authors introduce here the idea of a God who creates words with an embedded conventional relation, but this thesis implies, according to Mīmāṃsā authors, far too many unwarranted assumptions. Mīmāṃsakas rather stick to common experience, in which language is a given.
Mīmāṃsā authors also dedicate much energy to the explanation of the process through which one learns a language, first understanding the meaning of basic sentences and then the meaning of their constituent words.
The Deontic Nature of Language
According to the Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā approach to language, the sentence meaning is “something to be done” (kārya). In other words, unlike for Nyāya authors, sentences do not convey the existence of something, but rather that something should be done. Sentences which look as if they were conveying a descriptive statements should be interpreted as supplementing a (at times implicit) prescriptive one. For instance “It is hot here” is a supplement of “Please, open the window” and “Vāyu is the swiftest deity” is a supplement of “One should sacrifice to Vāyu”.
How does language work?
Meanings of Words and Sentences in Mīmāṃsā
Mīmāṃsakas subscribe to the idea that words convey word-meanings, and thus refute the Bhartṛharian holism. The relation between a word as meaningful unit and its meaning is fixed, as it is proved by our common experience of words, and it cannot be denied in favour of a view focusing on the text as a whole and rejecting without compelling reasons our prima facie experience of words as meaningful units.
Given that one can thus establish that words are meaningful, what exactly do they convey?
The Mīmāṃsā approach to the sentence meaning as something to be done
According to Mīmāṃsā authors, and unlike Nyāya ones, Vedic sentences do not convey the existence of something, but rather that something should be done. This means that the entire Veda is an instrument of knowledge only as regards duties and cannot be falsified through sense-perception, inference, etc. No Mīmāṃsā author, for instance, could ever blame a scientist for reaching a conclusion that clashes with data found in the Veda.
Śabara on sentences (PMS 1.1.24–26)
The discussion on the epistemological validity of sentences starts in Jaimini’s Pūrva Mīmāṃsā Sūtra (PMS) and in Śabara’s commentary thereon when the opponent notes that, even if —as established in PMS 1.1.5— there were really an originary connection between words and meanings, this would still not mean that the authorless Vedas are a reliable instrument of knowledge, since they are made of sentences, not just of words. And clusters of words are either made by human authors or are just causally put together by chance and are thus meaningless.