Basic thesis:
Arindam does not keep his card hidden. He speaks of a “suicidal movement of our thought about reality” “sloping from Naïve-realism to Absolute Skepticism through Idealism”, a suicidal movement that needs to be “blocked” (p. 75). It can be blocked, Arindam says, at three levels: 1. at a very early level, like Nyāya did (and Arindam wants to do), 2. by embracing some form of idealism while rejecting skepticism, 3. by embracing skepticism at the empirical level, but accepting the possibility of a mystical insight.

Methodology:
philosophia perennis: p. 101: ” ‘Contemporary; is a slippery word. Whether in language or in thought, those who worship what is current tend to ignore the timeless universal structures of human experience, thinking, and speech”
interaction with sources: ND asked in a meeting whether Arindam could have written the book by just “omitting the footnotes”, like Jan Westerhoff did with Madhyamaka philosophy. Now, my impression is that this is ethically unfair BUT ALSO impossible for Arindam’s book, since this is not based on a single argument (so that you can “delete” the footnotes), but rather on a dialogue among positions. It emerges from a tea-time-like conversation among colleagues in which it would be impossible to say “One might say that…” unless you specified which colleague is speaking, because their being a positivist or an idealist sheds a different light on their question. See, on this point, Arindam’s own perception of his contribution (p. 114): “In the context of the insightful infightings of the contemporary Western philosophers of language and the medieval Indian thinkers, I put forward my own conclusion about the meaning and reference of “I”.” We will see an example of this way of arguing already in chapter 6.

Defence of objects:
The main purpose of the first chapters is to go against idealism. Arindam presupposes that we can talk about “idealism” in general, as an over-arching category applicable to Berkeley, Śaṅkara and Yogācāra (and many more). However, behind this general framework, his discussions are more to-the-ground and focus on one specific speaker at a time.

Chapter 6 (pp. 65–75) focuses on how other idealists defeated idealism. It starts with 4 points in favour of idealism (in its Yogācāra fashion), namely:

• 1. mid-sized objects lead to antinomies because they have parts (this will be refuted through the assumption of samavāya, p. 87);
• 2. an object cannot be at the same time the cause of cognition and the thing featured in it. Atoms, for instance, cause the cognition, but don’t feature in it. Chairs etc. feature in the cognition, but don’t produce it.
• 3. the well-known sahopalambhaniyama (discussed in a previous post).
• 4. the argument from dreams shows that it is possible to experience objects without their mind-independent existence (this will be the topic of chapter 8).

Then, Arindam moves to Śaṅkara’s refutation of the Yogācāra position. For instance, how can something inner and mental *appear as* external, if we have never encountered anything external to begin with? How could we feign the external? (This is connected with the dream argument, as we will see below). Arindam suggests that Kant would be less vulnerable to this objection, since he could say that there is a specific function of our cognitive apparatus responsible for projecting things as external.

Arindam here reads Śaṅkara (and Kant) as accusing the Yogācāra of confusing the “phenomenal with the illusory” and he reads therefore Kant as an idealist who confutes idealism through the introduction of phenomena.
Here, by the way, Arindam attacks the Yogācāra because of a lack of distinction between saṃvṛtisat `conventionally real’ AND other forms of unreality. One should have been more nuanced, he thinks, in distinguishing between 1. what is phenomenal, 2. what is absolutely impossible (triangular flavours driving furiously) and 3. what is the result of illusions, dreams and illusions error. (By the way, Arindam’s first book was on absence, so let us consider him an expert here).

Arindam uses again Kant as an idealist defeating idealism when he uses him in order to justify the possibility of permanence of objects over time, given that we perceive ourselves as changing over times, something must remain stable so as to appreciate the change. But time is the form of our inner experience, so that no permanent element can be detected inside, unless through a comparison with something outside. (Arindam himself is not completely convinced by this argument, p. 73).

Chapter 7 focuses again on the sahopalambhaniyama problem and replies that “difference […] tolerates relatedness” (p. 79). It is true that we access objects through the mind, but this does not mean that they don’t exist also independently of it. Arindam takes advantage here of a characteristic of the English language (and of many others) and insists on paying attention to the `of’ when we speak of a `cognition *of* blue’: “I cannot experience or imagine a tree unless it is made as an object of some kind of awareness, but there is as much difference between the tree and my awareness of the tree as there is between the tree and its roots and branches. Inseparability does not mean identity” (p. 90).
It is a priori impossible to demonstrate the existence of uncognised things, but the very fact that everything is knowledge-accessible, says Arindam, presupposes that it really existed prior and independently of being cognised (p. 81). As suggested in a previous post, this thesis is closely linked with the one about how cognitions are never self-aware.
This chapter also gives Arindam a chance to discuss how he sees Nyāya realism. The objective world of Nyāya is a “world for the self”, that exists to enable selves to suffer and enjoy, thus different from the Cartesian dualism (where selves don’t really interact with matter) or from the world of imperceptible quarks in contemporary physics (p. 81).

Chapter 8 is about the Dream argument: How can we recognise something as a dream unless we wake up?

Chapter 9 on the Accusative is a good chance to discuss Arindam’s use of linguistic arguments. For some decades people working on Sanskrit philosophy thought that the linguistic turn was going to be the way Sanskrit philosophy could finally be vindicated. After all, did not Sanskrit philosophers understand ahead of time that the only way to access reality is via cognitions and that cognitions are inherently linguistics? Thus, analysing language is the best approach to reality after all. This dream was somehow scattered when philosophy of language became less popular in Anglo-Analytic philosophy. Still, Arindam has already explained that following contemporary fashions is not the only thing that counts. Hence, he could nonetheless write a fascinating chapter (chapter 10) on the reference of `I’, moving from Wittgenstein to Abhinavagupta. The main problem is what is the reference of `I’ (is it the ahaṅkāra? The ātman? Is it an empty term, because the very fact that it cannot go wrong means it cannot be correct either).

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.

Nonetheless, Śabara needs to explain a related topic, namely when studying the Mīmāṃsā —before or after one’s study of the Veda. Kumārila and Prabhākara introduce the prescription to learn the Veda (svādhyāyo ‘dhyetavyaḥ, see Kataoka 2001b) and the one to teach the Veda, respectively, as the prescriptions prompting the study of the Veda and, indirectly, of its meaning. Kumārila explains that the prescription to study the Veda does not include a result which can be independently desired and that one therefore needs to insert the knowledge of its meaning as the result. Prabhākara explains that a teacher needs to know the meaning of the Veda in order to teach the Veda and that the dignity of being a teacher is something independently desirable.

The space to the topic of why studying Mīmāṃsā and which prescription promotes it increases drastically —I would say— after Śālikanātha (8th c.?). Why did this question become relevant? Perhaps because its answer was less obvious and one needed to persuade a different kind of public. A public who knew of the importance of studying the Veda, but was not immediately convinced of the importance of undertaking also a detailed study of the Mīmāṃsā exegesis. I wonder whether part of the problem is due to also to a) Śaṅkara’s statement that the Vedāntins do not need to study Mīmāṃsā and b) the fact that the Mīmāṃsā presents itself as a Vedic exegesis, but in fact looks at the Vedas from the vantage point of the Brāhmaṇas, so that an audience more interested in other parts of the Vedas might be less convinced of the usefulness of Mīmāṃsā.

Veṅkaṭanātha, though primarily a Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedāntin, dedicates the first 28 pages of his commentary on the Pūrva Mīmāṃsā Sūtra to this topic. He refutes both the Bhāṭṭa and the Prābhākara points of view. The Bhāṭṭas are wrong because the knowledge of the meaning of the Veda is not something independently desirable. The Prābhākaras are wrong because the prescription to teach is not sufficiently established and, even if it were, it would not include the knowledge of the meaning of the Veda.
Veṅkaṭanātha analyses at length all position and then concludes briskly that the study of Mīmāṃsā needs to be undertaken out of one’s desire (hence the desiderative ending in PMS 1.1.1). In order to legitimate this desire, Veṅkaṭanātha is able to show that PMS 1.1.1 (through the linguistic expression atha) shows that taking time to undertake the study of Mīmāṃsā does not violate other prescriptions and that there is a suitable time for it.

European readers may feel some sympathy with Mīmāṃsā authors, who were possibly just intellectually interested in Mīmāṃsā exegesis, but had to face external challenges and to structure their intuitions about the Mīmāṃsā being “interesting” into a consistent research project.

athāto brahmajijñāsā
Now, after that, there is the desire to know the brahman.

Several topics are discussed in this connection, namely:

• What does “Now” (atha) exactly mean?
• What does “after that” (ataḥ) mean? What does it refer to?
• How should one interpret the compound brahmajijñāsā ‘desire to know the brahman’?
• Why the desiderative in jijñāsā `desire to know’?

As you might imagine, Śaṅkara reads ataḥ as referring only to the study of the Upaniṣads (whereas Rāmānuja reads it as referring to the whole Veda) and denies the role of desire (jijñāsā can in fact also be read as just meaning ‘investigation’).
Veṅkaṭanātha (also known as Vedānta Deśika) decides to start his commentary on the Mīmāṃsāsūtra along the same lines. In fact, UMS 1.1.1 reproduces the style of PMS 1.1.1:

athāto dharmajijñāsā
Now, after that, there is the desire to know dharma

Therefore, he needs to discuss the issue listed above and explains how the study of dharma presupposes the study of the Veda and how desire has a role to play. His discussion of the compound dharmajijñāsā is longer than than the corresponding ones (about brahmajijñāsā) in Śaṅkara and Rāmānuja and displays more familiarity with Pāṇini that I might have hoped for. He explains how the compound must be read as entailing a genitivus objectivus (genitive in the sense of a syntactical object, like when a father speaks of “love of my children” meaning the fact that he loves his children) for several reasons:

dharmasya jijñāsā dharmajijñāsā | karmaṇyevātra ṣaṣṭhī; sambandhasāmānya-
ṣaṣṭhīmaṃgīkṛtya tena tatra karmasāpekṣajijñāsāsāmarthyataḥ karmārthatvaklṛpter viḷambitatvāt | “kartṛkarmaṇoḥ kṛti” iti viśeṣavidhānāt | kartrarthatāyā ihānanvayāt | karmaṇaś cepsitatayā ‘bhyarhitatvāt | anyapare’pi sūtre viṣayaprayojanasūcanopayogāt | ānuṣaṃgikavivakṣāntarasyātrādoṣatvāt | pratipadavidhānaṣaṣṭhīsamāsaniṣedhasya kṛdyogaṣaṣṭhyāṃ pratiprasavena “jño ‘vidarthasya karaṇe” ityādisūtraviṣayatvasthāpanāc ca

The inquiry into dharma is the desire to know dharma. Here the sixth termination denotes the object (genitivus obiectivus), for the following reasons:
1. because, once one has accepted the sixth termination [as meaning] a general connection [“an inquiry related to dharma”], because of that, given that in the [sūtra] an enquiry which [still] requires an object would be impossible, one would be delayed by the fact of [having to] imagine which [referent is implicitly] meant as the object,
2. because of the specific [grammatical] rule “[The sixth case ending is employed after a stem] meaning agent or syntactical object, when [used] along with a kṛt affix” (A 2.3.65), 2.a [and] here (within the sūtra) [the word `dharma’] would not get connected [suitably] as something meaning the agent, 2.b. and because it is proper (abhyarhita“) [that the word `dharma’ denotes the syntactical object], since the object is the most desired [element, as in A 1.4.49],
3. because also in a sūtra dedicated to something else (i.e., to promoting the initiation of the study) it is useful to have an indication (sūcana) of the purpose (prayojana) and of the content (viṣaya) (namely dharma),
4. because there is no fault (doṣa) here of a different intention (vivakṣā) being necessarily implied (ānuṣaṅgika) (i.e., there is no reason to think that the author certainly meant something else),
5. and because it has been established that [the compound dharmajijñāsā interpreted as an objective genitive] is within the range of application of the [group of] sūtras starting with “Of the verb jñā-, when not used in the sense of `to know’, the instrument takes the sixth-case affix” (A 2.3.51) insofar as, in the case of the sixth ending when connected with (yoga) deverbal nouns (kṛt) (such as jijñāsā), the prohibition (niṣedha) of compounds with the sixth ending prescribed for every word* is suspended.

*A 2.2.15 prohibits compounding with nouns ending with the sixth ending if they denote the object (karman). 2.2.16 prohibits compounding with nouns ending with the kṛt suffixes aka and tṛC if they express an agent. 2.2.17 excludes from the prohibition the cases of agents of habitual or professional actions. 2.2.18–22 add further exceptions.

Thus, Veṅkaṭanātha explains that there are good reasons to think that dharmajijñāsa is properly formed as a compound entailing an objective genitive. The reason 5, however, is still puzzling to me. A 2.3.51 regards the usage of jñā– when it does not mean ‘to know’ (but ‘to sacrifice’). Thus, how can it regard compounds such as dharmajijñāsā? However, the sūtras following it all discuss cases of the genitive used in the sense of instrument or object (e.g., of the verbs meaning ‘to remember’). Could Veṅkaṭanātha mean that the group of sūtras starting with A 2.3.51 constitute an exception overruling the prohibition of compounds with the sixth ending, or has 2.3.51 a specific role to play?

On Veṅkaṭanātha’s relation with Śaṅkara’s and Rāmānuja’s models, see my contribution in the book Adaptive Reuse, available here.

In contrast, sense perception, inference, etc. only convey knowledge about what exists. Therefore, since duties cannot be known through any other instruments of knowledge but the Veda, the Veda remains unfalsifiable. This unfalsifiability by default would not be enough for thinkers like the Buddhist epistemologists, who claim that we need to find solid reasons in favour of something or someone in order to believe it or her. However, Mīmāṃsā authors claim that all cognitions are intrinsically valid unless and until they are falsified. Therefore, the fact that the Veda conveys knowledge which cannot be overturned makes it into a valid instrument of knowledge.
But how can one claim that the whole Veda only conveys duties? What about Vedic sentences which look like descriptions of states of affairs? Historically, the primary focus of Mīmāṃsā authors has always been the Brāhmaṇa portion of the Veda, which entails sacrificial prescriptions. Mīmāṃsā authors have been busy for centuries trying to make sense of the seeming confused sum of statements relative to the various sacrifices, and ranging from direct prescriptions to aetiologies. They learnt to put at the centre a originative prescription (utpattividhi, the one which first mentions that a given sacrifice has to be performed) and to link to it all the other prescriptive and seemingly descriptive statements. In this way, they could find out that many statements of the latter group are in fact to be read either as prescriptions or as prescriptions’ supplements. Among the former are statements such as “The ladle is made of palāśa wood”, which in fact means “Carve a ladle out of palāśa wood” (a contemporary reader may recall descriptive statements with the same purport in recipe books). As for the latter, statements such as “Vāyu is the swiftest deity” are re-conceived as eulogising the prescription or one of its elements, so that they convey a meaning only together with it. In the example given, the final meaning would be “Sacrifice to Vāyu, since you will get your result promptly”. Passages out of the Vedic saṃhitās are labelled mantras and have a role only within a sacrifice. Thus, they too do not aim at conveying a descriptive meaning.

Prābhākara authors extend this approach to language in general, which they explain on the basis of their explanation of Vedic language. Accordingly, they claim that also worldly language only conveys things to be done. This theory has been opposed by Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā and Vedānta authors, and it may seem to be counter-intuitive, but in fact it probably only opposes 21st c. European common-sense assumptions more than general human intuitions. Some common examples may help to get what is at stake with it. When, for instance, a mother tells her children “It is nine o’clock”, her children all immediately understand that this descriptive sentence is in fact only a supplement to an unspoken prescription, namely “Go to bed!”. In other words, it is not at all clear that we are really so interested in sheer facts. By contrast, many (most?) descriptive statements seem to be mostly just accessories to an underlying prescriptive one (“X said…/Y did…” are in fact just an accessory to the unspoken prescription “Stop talking to X!/Do like Y!”).

The opposition from Bhāṭṭa authors centers around counter-examples such as descriptive statements which appear to convey a meaning on their own. The stock examples are “Your wife gave birth to a son” and “Your unmarried daughter is pregnant”. One might imagine that, like in the examples I made up in the paragraph above, also in those cases there are unspoken prescriptions these statements supplement (e.g., “Come home to celebrate!” and “Find a solution!” respectively). However, Prābhākara authors retort that in these cases the sentences do not actually convey a meaning alone, but through the fact that their speakers’ mimicry helps us understanding that we have to feel happy or desperate.
By contrast, Vedānta authors have deeper reasons to oppose the Prābhākara (and also the Bhāṭṭa) theory. Vedānta authors, unlike Pūrva Mīmāṃsā ones, historically started their inquiry by focusing on the Upaniṣads, which contain much less prescriptive statements than the Brāhmaṇas and many more narrative passages with seemingly descriptive statements. Moreover, their ontology is based on the content of such Upaniṣadic statements, since, they claim, the ultimate reality, which they call brahman, cannot be known through perception, inference, etc., and can only be known through these Upaniṣadic statements. Thus, if the Upaniṣadic statements can only be valid insofar as they supplement a prescription, they would no longer be able to convey information about the brahman. Vedānta authors, therefore, have to ensure that Upaniṣadic statements can convey a descriptive meaning. Śaṅkara, the main author of Advaita Vedānta, tries to achieve this goal by separating the destinies of Upaniṣads and Brāhmaṇas, just like he separated Pūrva and Uttara Mīmāṃsā (i.e., Vedānta). Rāmānuja, the main author of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, by contrast, aimed at considering the whole Veda as a whole and therefore tried to construct all Vedic sentences as conveying a descriptive meaning, which can eventually lead to action in order to achieve the purpose they describe.

One of the main arguments in favour of intrinsic validity is that if we needed a further cognition Y to know that X is right (that I am in fact typing), we would then need a cognition Z to know that cognition Y is right and so on. Veṅkaṭanātha discusses the issue in its original context, namely the commentary on the Pūrva Mīmāṃsā Sūtra 1.1.3. Interestingly enough, he frames his objector as if he were quoting from a specific text:

As for the said regressus ad infinitum (anavasthāna) in the investigation about the instruments of knowledge, namely, “the instrument of knowledge which has to be investigated should be investigated through another [instrument of knowledge] and that other by an [instrument of knowledge] other than itself [and so on ad infinitum]”, that too is stupid, because the investigation operates [only] in regard to topics which are doubted (whereas no one would doubt the validity of the instrument for a thorough investigation of the instrument to know dharma), and because we do not agree about the rule (niyama) according to which doubt [must] regard each element respectively following (i.e., it is not agreed upon that doubt regards again and again each following instrument, as assumed by the objector), and because distrust (aśaṅkā) ends up (avadhi) in contradictions (with one’s own actions, since nothing would be possible if one had to verify everything), and because the reasoning about possible alternatives (tarka) operates only as long as there is doubt, or it (reasoning) ceases (viśrama) in the case of whatever instrument of knowledge, etc., which brings about (nirvah-) [knowledge about] itself and another (its object) (svaparanirvāhaka).

yat tu pramāṇaparīkṣāyām anavasthānam uktam— pramāṇaṃ parīkṣyamāṇam anyena parīkṣyeta, taccānyat tato ‘nyeneti— tad api mandam; sandigdhaviṣaye parīkṣāpravṛtteḥ | uttarottareṣu ca sandehaniyamānabhyupagamāt | āśaṃkāyāś ca vyāghātāvadhikatvāt | yāvadāśaṃkam eva ca tarkapravṛtteḥ | svaparanirvāhake vā kasmiṃścit pramāṇādau viśramāt (SM ad PMS 1.1.3, 1971 pp. 44–45).

The passage is quite dense, since Veṅkaṭanātha updates the discussion through a reference to Udayana’s Nyāyakusumañjali 3.7 and the contradictory nature of doubt (śaṅkā ced anumāsty eva na cec chaṅkā tatastarām | vyāghātāvadhir āśaṅkā tarkaḥ śaṅkāvadhir mataḥ || 7 ||). Udayana appears to say that doubt is contradicted by the fact that one in fact undertake actions.

The frame yat tu…iti “As for the said…” makes me think that Veṅkaṭanātha is repeating either from his own text or from another specific one (as it is the case whenever he uses this frame), but I could not locate any source for the passage. Similar ideas are found both in the section preceding Udayana’s verse quoted above (where they regard inference), and (in nuce) in the Vṛtti on the PMS quoted by Śaṅkara, to which Veṅkaṭanātha refers some lines before and some lines after the ones reproduced here.
Did Veṅkaṭanātha know further portions of it?

1. 1. The inclusion of the Āḻvār’s theology in Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta
2. 2. The Pāñcarātra orientation of both subschools of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta
3. 3. The two sub-schools
4. 4. The Vedāntisation of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta
5. 5. The impact of other schools

The two sub-schools
The discussion on Pāñcarātra (which you can find in the first part of this post, here) suggests a more general problem regarding the origin of the two “subschools” of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta. Western scholars initially described them by projecting retrospectively the split into Vaṭakalai and Teṅkalai to more ancient times (Lester attributes it already to ”less than 150 years after Rāmānuja’s death”, 1976, p. 150) and even called the split a ”schism” (Kirchentrennung, Otto 1917, p. 6), thus betraying a tendency to re-read it through the lenses of the history of Christian theology. Raman, among others, has shown how the split occurred only much later (around the 17th c., see Raman 2007). Mumme (1988) suggested that the two sub-schools have a distinct prehistory, linked to the two centers of Śrīraṅgam (for the later Teṅkalai) and Kañcī (for the later Vaṭakalai), both originating from Rāmānuja’s teaching. The hypothesis could be led further until the consequence that there was never a unity which then split into two and that the two distinct currents, rather, were brought together by the converging efforts of some theologians (see this post) and by the fact of sharing a religious background.

The Vedāntisation of the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta
Who is responsible for the Vedāntisation of the school? Rāmānuja is a clearly Vedāntic author, whereas Yāmuna is not, but was the turn determined only by the former?

The impact of other schools

Rāmānuja is first and foremost a Vedāntic author, but his position towards Pūrva Mīmāṃsā is much more inclusive than Śaṅkara’s one, something which could be due to his choice or to Śaṅkara’s peculiar choice to exclude Pūrva Mīmāṃsā (a question which is difficult to solve, given that no other early Vedāntic commentary is preserved).
Apart from Vedānta, the most obvious candidate would be Nyāya, which in fact did influence Nāthamuni (judging from the title of one of his lost texts) and certainly Yāmuna’s first adherence to the idea of inferring God’s existence and his life-long adherence to the idea of inferring the validity of the Pāñcarātra Sacred Texts from the fact that they have a reliable author, namely God. The confrontation with Nyāya changed by the time of Veṅkaṭanātha, who authored a Purification of Nyāya (Nyāyapariśuddhi).

How and why did Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta develop the way it did?

This post is the second part of a revised summary of the introduction I held at my panel at the World Sanskrit Conference. For the first part, see here. For a pdf of my presentation, see here. For a summary of the panel in general, see here.

Yāmuna’s efforts to incorporate Pāñcarātra doctrine into the Vedānta involve some recognition of the Bhedābheda view permeating Pāñcarātra. In order to avoid Śaṅkara’s criticism of the Bhedābheda, however, Yāmuna has to develp his own distinction between brahman in the pure state and brahman as the creative power behind and within the universe. For him, this distinction is between God as the possessor of qualities and the divine qualities thus possessed, out of which the universe evolves. He admits* that his view can be described as “difference and non-difference”. […] Rāmānuja appears to be more precise than Yāmuna and more consistent in avoiding expressions that sound either like Bhāskara’s Bhedābheda or Śaṅkara’s Advaita. Perhaps this was an additional reason for Rāmānuja […] to avoid turning to Pāñcarātra texts.

To sum up, according to Carman (1974 and 2007) and Neevel (1977), Yāmuna already initiated a Vedāntisation. The main differences between his Vedāntisation and Rāmānuja’s one would be the fact that the former focused on the Vedāntisation of Pāñcarātra and was closer to Bhedābheda.
Rāmānuja, I might further suggest, was creating a Vedāntic school much more than he was vedāntising anything else. Furthermore, he appears to have been the inventor of the Viśiṣṭādvaita ontology.

*Unfortunately, Carman does not say where. Since he refers to Neevel 1977 in this paragraph, one might try to look there.

from assayofficebirmingham.com

The debate is very much present in Sanskrit sources because it is contiguous to the possibility of intellectual perception. In fact, if sense-perception can be constantly improved by practice, it seems plausible to assume that it could be improved until the point in which the intellect can perceive in its own right. And this opens the door to super-sensuous perception.
But let me come back to the case of expert knowledge. The standard example is that of an expert of gems, who can recognise a genuine gem through sense perception. There are interesting debates about what exactly can be perceived through sense-perception in this case. For instance, Veṅkaṭanātha in his Seśvaramīmāṃsā ad PMS 1.1.4 (English translation under preparation by me) says that an expert can recognise the different hues of colours of a gem, which are concealed to lay people due to their similarity. However, even an expert cannot sense-perceive the preciousness of a gem —he instead only infers it, although the inference is not verbally formulated. By the way, Michel X, while commenting on the the post which triggered the present one* expresses some skepticism concerning the experts’ perception in the case of works of art. He might be right, and I can easily imagine Veṅkaṭanātha claiming that judging about the authenticity of a work of art implies implicit inferences rather than sense-perception alone.

To sum up, authors like Yāmuna (in his Ātmasiddhi, the relevant passage is translated towards the end of this article) maintain that perception can undergo an indefinite progress, basically until everything can be directly perceived —so that this argument leads to an evidence for the existence of God. Veṅkaṭanātha, by contrast, claims that perception can be improved through exercise, but that such improvement has precise limitations. Just like different people can jump more and more, but no one can jump until the moon, so visual perception will never grasp what is intrinsically outside the precinct of application of sight, e.g., smell.

Another instance of the argument of the continuous improvement I could find is located in Śaṅkara’s Yogaśāstravivaraṇa (the attribution is doubted, and sense perception does not help, thus I am here following the opinion of an expert, Kengo Harimoto), which has been recently critically edited and translated by Kengo Harimoto (see here). The argument is found in the commentary ad Yogabhāṣya 1.25 and leads to the establishment of an omniscient God through the fact that knowledge can always be improved and that it needs to achieve a peak somewhere. Maṇḍana Miśra, who is believed to have been a senior contemporary of Śaṅkara, rejected the theological part of the argument (see Harimoto, p. 11). Harimoto does not say where, but I imagine that this might be in his Vidhiviveka, around 1.14, where the discussion on omniscience takes place.

UPDATE: A further instance of this argument is discussed here.
*This post has been stimulated by Helen De Cruz’ discussion of the topic, here, and by two comments I received about it (many thanks for them, by the way!).

Following Ram-Prasad’s own advice, I just read his Reading the Ācāryas: A Generous Conception of the Theological Method (2014). The topic of the article is quite interesting, since it opposes Śaṅkara’s and Rāmānuja’s diverging commentaries on the same verse of the Bhagavadgītā, thus discussing their different theologies, i.e., their approach to Sacred Texts. Ram-Prasad notices that theirs is an exegesis (deriving meanings out of the text) rather than an eisegesis (putting meanings into the text —but Ram-Prasad does not define the term), since

The ācāryas would reject eisegesis in the Gītā commentary. […] Of course, exegesis itself it an exercise in agency, but one disciplined by receptivity to what the text seeks to yield. Śaṅkara may braodly take such receptivity to be defined as a self-conscious search for non-duality and Rāmānuja as a prepared openness to God’s gracious teaching […] (p. 11)

However, even more interesting is the methodological discussion which follows the bulk of the article. Driving from F.X. Clooney and Rowan Williams, Ram-Prasad discusses about the possibility of theology. Clooney and Williams seem to agree, in Ram-Prasad’s depiction, that theology presupposes a living community which enlivens the texts it deals with. However, Ram-Prasad contends, such a community can also be based on a shared methodology, instead than being based on a shared faith:

I want to suggest that the community can also be defined by a methodological commitment to treating the text as having such unity and conveying meaning (p. 13)

What do readers think? Is the community of the readers who are commited to the unity and meaningfulness of the texts comparable to the community of believers? Can it work like it as a legitimate actor of theology?

(As a side note, I was pleased to read fn. 3, where Ram-Prasad writes that “The most systematic criticism of Buddhist positions by a Viśiṣṭādvaitin is much later, by Vedānta Deśika, when Buddhism is even more of a distant memory than in Rāmānuja’s time. Clearly Deśika engages with those positions purely for their philosophical value, elegantly combining various realist arguments that are consistent with his own reading of Rāmānuja’s metaphysics”. This is exactly the position I upheld during my paper at the IABS conference and I am pleased to read that I have Ram-Prasad’s independent support for it.)

(As an even less important side note, which does not regard Ram-Prasad’s scholarship nor the content of his article: the article as it has been put on line is fraught with typos. It is a pity that journal editors no longer have the time and the ease to assure good editorial quality).
For my short review of Clooney’s book on Comparative Theology (Clooney 2010), frequently referred to by Ram-Prasad, see here. For a post on Clooney’s way to approach theology, see here.

Purva Mimamsa authors are generally not interested in the topic, whereas several Uttara Mimamsa (i.e. Vedanta) ones deal at length with the status of the Mimamsasastra (I am tempted to say that, similarly, Christians alone are concerned with the unity of the two testaments within the Bible).
A particularly puzzling element, in this connection, is the status of an “intermediate part” of the Mimamsasastra, variously called madhyamakanda (as opposed to the karma– and brahmakandas or to the purva– and uttara– ones, i.e., the Purva Mimamsa Sutras, henceforth PMS and the Vedanta Sutras, henceforth UMS), or Sankarsa(na)kanda, but also devatakanda or upasanakanda. Neither of these names is found together with any other one, so that it seems clear that the basic assumption for the Mimamsa (both of Purva and Uttara Mimamsa) authors interested in the topics was that there were (at most) three basic texts of the Mimamsa Sastra.
Now, the problem is that the extant Sankarsa Kanda (henceforth SK), preserved in a few manuscripts and edited together with a commentary by Devasvamin or with a later one by Bhaskararaya, is a rather boring text, dealing with technicalities of the ritual. I would locate it in the Srauta-Sutra–Purva Mimamsa milieu, in the sense that it deals with technical details and does not seem to me to aim at more general problems. Thus, it makes good sense that Sabara twice refers to it (see this post) or that Somesvara does it once, but that no more Purva Mimamsa energies are dedicated to it. I might be wrong, but I am reminded of the complements to Panini’s Astadhyayi, such as the Dhatupatha, in the sense that Sabara seems to refer to the SK as to an appendix of the PMS, which does not need a specific exegetical attention (and, in fact, he did not comment on it).

A further significant detail is that the content of this SK does not correspond neither to the appellation devatakanda, nor to the function ascribed to it by Venkatanatha/Vedanta Desika and by other Vedantins, i.e., the discussions of deities, later to be subsumed within the brahman in the UMS.

By contrast, the SK–Devatakanda referred to by such Vedantins as Vedanta Desika in his Sesvara Mimamsa fits nicely in a progressive scheme: the PMS deals in this interpretation with karman, the SK with deities and the UMS with brahman.
Which sutras are attributed to the one or the other? Sabara (two sutras), Somesvara and Sankara (one sutra, see below) mention sutras also found in the extant SK, whereas later Vedantins either do not quote anything at all or quote a) the sutra quoted by Sankara (so Ramanuja, SriBhasya ad 3.3.43), b) the same three (or four) theistic sutras referring to Visnu and not found in the extant SK (so Venkatanatha in his Satadusani and in the Tattvatika, and Madhva in the Anuvyakhyana).
I counted three to four sutras because Madhva’s Anuvyakhyana mentions three (athato daivi (scil. jijnasa?), ya visnur aha iti and tam brahmety acaksate), which should occur, respectively, at the very beginning and at the very end of the SK. Venkatanatha does not mention the first one, but has the last two preceded by ante harau taddarsanat. tam brahmety acaksate makes indeed a smooth transition to the UMS. Jayatirtha’s commentary to Madhva attributes them to a Devasastra, an appellation which could refer to the SK-devatakanda previous to its confusion with the SK (see below).
Further four slokas from some sankarsanasutresu and not present in the extant SK are found within Utpala Vaisnava’s commentary on the Spandapradipika.

A further significant element is the connection with the Pancaratra. Already Sankara mentions the SK in his UMS-Bhasya in the context of a sutra (3.3.43) which is interpreted as discussing the validity of the vyuha doctrine of the Pancaratra. Further, Kanazawa mentions a very interesting passage by Mukunda Jha Bkashi, the editor of Raghavabhatta’s Padarthadarsa (15th c.), who writes that the PMS refer to the Brahmanas, the SK to the Pancaratras and the UMS to the Upanisads, thus distinguishing them on the basis of their referring to a different part of the Veda. In the passage the editor comments upon, Raghavabhatta attributes the upasanakanda to Narada and the UMS to Vyasa (who is regularly identified with Badarayana, see, e.g., Venkatanatha’s Satadusani 3). Who is this Narada? In any case, the name is connected with the Vaisnava milieu and it figures together with Sankarsana in the guruparampara leading to Vyasa in the (Vaisava) Hayagrivopanisad (Kanazawa, p. 41).
And the connection with the Vaisnava (and perhaps Kasmirian) milieu and, thus, with the Pancaratra is reinforced by Utpala Vaisnava’s quote.

To sum up, the extant SK does not seem to properly fulfill the role assigned to it by Vedantin authors.
A possible explanation could be that Vedantin authors used the name of a text which was assumed as part of the unitary Mimamsa Sastra but was either lost or little known (remind the lack of quotations of the extant SK in Vedanta Desika) and confused it with a different text which fulfilled a role which they needed to see fulfilled, i.e., that of introducing God in the Mimamsa system. Perhaps Kanazawa is right in pointing out that the very name SK might have helped, due to the importance of Sankarsana in the Pancaratra vyuha doctrine (Kanazawa, p. 40).

It is still difficult to tell how and when exactly did this superimposition of the one text on the other take place, but, as already hinted at, it seems to have taken place in Vedanta-Pancaratra milieus and Sankara may have played a major role in it, since he quotes from the extant SK, but in the context of a theological-Pancaratrika discussion. It might, thus, have been Sankara (or his Pancaratra opponent) who made the SK’s role shift from sheer technical discussions to theological ones. In other words, previous to Sankara there might have been a technical SK and a theistic text (perhaps only a few sentences). If we accept Jayatirtha’s authority, the latter had already a Vedantic flavour and we might speculate that it had been used by Vaisnavas (perhaps: Pancaratrins) who wanted to vindicate the Vedanta status of their system. Sankara’s quote of the former SK in a context where one could have expected the latter may have created the confusion between the two, a confusion which was very much welcomed for non-Advaita Vedantins and which harmonises nicely with further tripartitions (e.g., the one between karman, jnana and bhakti).

A further scenario would require one to assume that no SK-devatakanda ever existed and that some Vedantins artfully manipulated the evidences regarding the SK, but since attestations regarding it range well beyond the borders of an interconnected group of people, this scenario is at the moment less likely.

Last, it is possible that there existed a tradition of interpreting the extant SK in a theistic way and that it was in this connection that some further theistic sUtras have been attributed to it. Although this hypothesis clashes with the fact that no sutras of the extant SK have been transmitted together with the SK-devatakanda ones, it is probably right in pointing out that the confusion was quite ancient. Anandagiri’s explanation of the name sankarsa, for instance, refers to the technical contents of the extant SK, but then calls it devatakanda (sankarsyate karmakandastham evavasistam karma samksipyocyate iti sankarso devatakandam).

The Purva Mimamsa milieus seemingly remained unaffected by this move (remind Somesvara’s quote from the extant SK as late as in the 12th c. and the general lack of interest for the SK).

Which scenario seems to you more plausible?

On the SK, see this post and this one