Tag Archives: Śabara

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Kumārila on deities

Did Kumārila believe in the language-independent existence of deities? In their efficacy within sacrifices? I believe he did not. Sacrifices work independently of deities who at most might be Epicurean-like entities, with no function in human lives. For this purpose, I am going to examine a passage in Kumārila’s Ṭupṭīkā ad 9.1, adhikaraṇa 4, p. 1652ff (Śubbāśāstrī 1929 edition).

The whole passage starts because Śabara is discussing the role of the deity in sacrifice. He explains that the deity does not promote the sacrifice (na devatā prayojikā and na devatāprayuktāḥ pravartiṣyāmahe). An opponent mentions the fact that the deity is mentioned as the target (sampradāna) of the action (given that it is in the dative case). Śabara quickly dismisses the point as related to the fact that the sacrifice is the real instrument to realise the result and moves on. Kumārila elaborates on it and comes to the conclusion that the deity has a primary role because of its grammatical function, which makes it needed for the performance of the sacrifice.

“[Obj:] But the deity is mentioned as the target (sampradāna) [and hence needs to be the one that prompts one to sacrifice, like the teacher to whom one gives a gift prompts one to give it].

[R:] The sacrifice, which is enjoined with regard to a result. requires a performance. And this performance is not possible without a deity and a sacrificial substance (to be offered). And the substance and the deity which are required (by the performance) are required only on the side of the complement, not as the thing to be realised [by the sacrifice] (which is the real motivator). Among the two, the substance becomes a complement through the third-case ending. The deity through a suffix or through the fourth-case ending.”

Here Pārthasārathi’s Tantraratna adds an intermediate objection explaining that this makes the deity seemingly into the principal element. The response is that this is not a problem.

“And if this deity-complement did not reach the condition of being primary with regard to the sacrifice (as required by the dative ending expressing the target), the sacrifice would not be performed at all. And without the performance of the sacrifice, there would not be the complement either. And if the sacrifice did not reach the condition of being its (complement’s) secondary element (guṇa), it would not come into being.

Therefore the sacrifice needs to reach the condition of being secondary as something/through an activity which is unavoidably concomitant (to the grammatical form used). And also the deity-complement [needs to reach] the condition of being primary as something unavoidably concomitant (to the grammatical form used).”

The addition of “unavoidably concomitant” (nāntarīiyaka) may seem puzzling, since neither Kumārila nor Pārthasārathi explain it. Clooney 1997 makes the bold move to interpret it as na antarīyaka (not… intermediary). I can see his motivation, but antarīyaka is not a Sanskrit word I am aware of. (NB: The L manuscript and the Tantraratna read tasmād yāgena nāntarīyakeṇa vyāpāreṇa guṇabhāvaḥ pratipattavyaḥ (instead of tasmād yāgena nāntarīyako guṇabhāvaḥ pratipattavyaḥ)).

At this point, Pārthasārathi’s Tantraratna adds that this does not mean that the sacrifice has become because of that for the sake of the deity. The following explains why.

“Nor is it the case that the unavoidable functioning is the cause for being primary or secondary, since it is not what is enjoined (and only the injunction determines real primary status). For, [one thinks:] “Since I have been enjoined towards the result, I realise the result through the sacrifice, not otherwise” (and this shows how the injunction puts the result as the primary thing and the sacrifice as its instrument).”

The Tantraratna has an interesting variant here, namely yāgo hi phale coditaḥ. This fits the beginning of the passage, which also read yāgaḥ phale codito…. The translation, in this case, would be as follows: “The sacrifice, being enjoined with regard to the result, does not realise the result otherwise [but through the deity as target]”.

“In this way, the unavoidable functioning needs to be the secondary element with respect to the deity.”

PSM adds: “in order to realise the sacrifice’s being an instrument towards the result”. It also specifies: “the secondary status is not enjoined”.

“Hence, in all cases there are two parts (a principal one, and a secondary one). Among them, we need to understand which one is what is wished to be expressed and which one is not. Among these two possibilities, in worldly experience what is wished to be expressed is determined by the force of things. In the Veda, by contrast, by language. And through language the sacrifice is the primary element, because it realises the result, given that it is proximate [to the result], The deity, by contrast, is understood to be the secondary element. Nor is it the case that the subordination (śeṣatva) is characterised as being an auxiliary (upakāra). Rather, it is established that it is characterised by the Vedic injunction.”

PSM explains that the “Nor…” sentence is the cause of the previous one.

“[UP:] What is the purpose of this investigation?

[R:] If the sacrifice had the purpose of gladdening the deity, then the deity were the one to be worshipped and the sacrifice would be a worship. And the worship is a thing known in worldly experience. Within a worship, what would be the confidence [one could have] in the claim that Sūrya is worshipped in the same way as Agni? The very opposite might be the case (namely that Sūrya dislikes what Agni likes). (Hence, the ectype for Sūrya should not be performed as the archetype sacrifice for Agni!)”

Thus, Kumārila concludes, the fact that the material trumps the deity when it comes to determining the procedure to be followed shows that the sacrifice is not a worship aimed at the deity and that the deity’s seeming predominant role is due to grammar only. I don’t see any important difference between Kumārila’s and Śabara’s conclusions here.

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Intro to Sanskrit philosophy

Background: This year I taught again a class on Sanskrit philosophy (for the first time since 2021). I only had 12 meetings, of three hours each, hence I had do made drastic choices. The following is the result of these choices (alternative choices could have been possible, e.g., focusing on the Upaniṣads and their commentaries). Comments, as usual welcome!

There is a time within Sanskrit philosophy, approximately around 500 to 1000 CE, without which all later discussions do not make sense (whereas one can understand later discussions without referring to, e.g., the Brāhmaṇas, the Pāli canon etc.).
I am thinking of this core of Sanskrit philosophy as the period of time in which philosophers interacted with each other in a dialectical way, learning from each other and being compelled by each other’s points. In other words, as the time in which philosophy was constrained by the need to give reasons for each claim. In this sense, I am not focusing on the Pāli Canon or on the Upaniṣads.

At the core of this period lies the interaction between three schools, namely Mīmāṃsā, Nyāya and Buddhist epistemological school. No matter the topic, the interaction among these three is always at the center and always needs to be taken into account. According to the various topics, further schools might need to be taken into account. For instance, discussions about atomism will need to take into account the Vaiśeṣika school, discussions about language need to take into account the Vyākaraṇa school.

At the center of this core moment are discussions about epistemology and philosophy of language. It is interesting to note that ontology does not necessarily logically precede epistemology and that the opposite can be the case, especially in the case of Mīmāṃsā. This is particularly evident in the case of discussions about prāmāṇya `validity’.

Sanskrit philosophy developed through debates among thinkers commenting and responding to each other. In this way, they showed that ‘novelty’ is overestimated as a criterion to assess philosophical value and its consistent presence among the criteria reviewers of grants and projects are asked to assess is more the result of a fashion than of inner-philosophical reasons.

This does not mean that individual authors did not deliver substantial contribution to philosophy. Philosophy develops through its history and its history is made by individual thinkers. Nonetheless, these individual thinkers contribute under the garb of a school, downplaying their disagreements with their predecessors and often enveloping them within a commentary on a predecessor’s text, which is meant not just to explain it, but also to enfold all its potential meaning. Some scholars did move from one school to the other (e.g., possibly Vasubandhu or Maṇḍana), others just introduced in one school the elements of the other school they more strongly agreed with (e.g., Jayanta).

Key authors to be kept in mind:
• Dignāga (Buddhist epistemological school), introduced the threefold check, later accepted by all thinkers
• Kumārila (Mīmāṃsā), introduced the concept of intrinsic validity, explained that cognitions are not self-aware, challenged the Dignāga framework, systematised the discussions about absence and the other sources of knowledge (found already in his predecessor, Śabara).
• Dharmakīrti (Buddhist epistemological school), younger contemporary of Kumārila, adjusted the apoha theory and several other epistemological points in the light of Kumārila’s cricitism.
• Jayanta (Nyāya), modified the Nyāya epistemology in the light of Kumārila’s criticism, explained that cognitions are intrinsically doubtful, unless proven right, but that this does not lead to a paralysis, because one can act based on doubt.

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Debates on adhikāra (again)

Within the Śābarabhāṣya commentary on the Mīmāṃsāsūtra (the foundational text of the Mīmāṃsā school), chapter 1 of book 6 is dedicated to adhikāra. The chapter deals with several cases in a manner which might surprise some readers, because the text does not distinguish a priori between “good” and “bad” cases and rather applies Mīmāṃsā-based reasoning throughout. For instance, an opponent suggests understanding adhikāra as only or primarily grounded on desire and is therefore willing to accept as a consequence that women, śūdras (members of the lower class) and animals have the same adhikāra as male Brahmans to perform Vedic sacrifices. Even more surprising, perhaps, is that the reply by the upholder of the final opinion is not that animals are impure, women are inferior and śūdras are inherently flawed. Rather, they discuss about the other requirements of adhikāra and show why they exclude some of the above categories from the performance of Vedic sacrifices.

To begin with, animals lack the adhikāra to perform sacrifices not because they lack desire (they do have plans), but because 1. they lack the ability to perform them, insofar as they don’t have hands. Moreover, 2. they lack desires regarding the next life, because these desires depend on our being cultivated into desiring something beyond the present life. Thus, wolves etc. can decide to fast, but only because they want health, and not for purposes relative to a next life, because they don’t know about it.

There is then an interesting discussion about poor people and people having some physical disability. It’s easy to see that the latter lack ability and are therefore excluded from having the adhikāra to perform Vedic sacrifices. However, how can one distinguish the case of disabled people who cannot, for instance, look at the clarified butter (because they are blind) and poor people who cannot look at the clarified butter because they lack the substances to buy it? Śabara speaks therefore of a distinction between śakti and sāmarthya. Both terms can be translated as “ability”, but Śabara seems to make them into technical terms in order to distinguish the two cases. Accordingly, poor people temporarily lack the sāmarthya to perform a sacrifice, but this temporary lack of sāmarthya is remediable, because they could acquire the relevant substances later on in their life, whereas they never lost the śakti to perform sacrifice. I will conventionally call the temporary thing being lost (or sāmarthya) ‘capacity’, whereas the thing that poor people don’t loose (i.e., their śakti) ‘ability’. Śabara distinguishes them insofar as the former is bahirbhūta ‘external’, whereas the latter is ātmavṛtti ‘belonging to one’s soul, intrinsic’.

Unfortunately, Kumārila does not keep this opposition and just generically speaks of sāmarthya.

It is also interesting that the debate about disabled people continued through the centuries. Kumārila (a commentator of Śabara and possibly the main author of the Mīmāṃsā school) explains that disabled people lack the sāmarthya (and hence the adhikāra) to perform Vedic sacrifices, but that this does not mean that they cannot reach the same goal, namely happiness in a future life (a.k.a. ‘heaven’). He clarifies that they have a different path open to them, namely that of remaining a chaste student of the Veda and reciting it. This is considered by him to be an easier option and Kumārila needs therefore to explain that it is only open to the ones who lack the ability to perform the more difficult alternative, whereas those who are able to work, get married and perform Vedic sacrifices should certainly do so. Incidentally, the same device will be used by an even later author, Veṅkaṭanātha, to justify the adoption of an easier soteriological path, namely prapatti, instead of bhakti. This path is only open, he points out, to those who are unable to follow the path of bhakti, hence there is no contradiction between the command about a difficult path and an easier one.

Later Mīmāṃsā texts, possibly after Khaṇḍadeva, go back to the duties of disabled people and offer a slightly different solution. They say that disabled people cannot perform elective rituals, because they lack the relevant ability, but they still retain the adhikāra (insofar as they have learnt the Vedas by heart etc.) to perform fixed rituals. In fact, these rituals can be performed ‘as much as one can’, hence a blind person will just skip the command to look at clarified butter etc.

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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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Permissions, rights and adhikāra

As discussed in previous blogposts and articles, it is established that in Mīmāṃsā and Mīmāṃsā-following Dharmaśāstra all commands are dyadic; prescriptions, prohibitions and permissions are not interdefinable; permissions are always exceptions to previous prohibitions or negative obligations, and they are better-not permissions.

Permissions in Medhātithi: Two examples

Case 1:

Manu:

etān dvijātayo deśān saṃśrayeran prayatnataḥ |
śūdras tu yasmiṃs tasmin vā nivased vṛttikarśitaḥ || 2.24 ||

Medhātithi thereon:
śūdrasya dvijātiśuśrūṣāyā vihitatvāt taddeśanivāse sarvadā prāpte tatrājīvato deśāntaranivāso ’bhyanujñāyate.

So, living in another place (deśāntaranivāsaḥ) for a śūdra is permitted, if he cannot get a living where the twice-born ones live, because a śūdra is prescribed (vihita) to obey the twice-born ones. What we see is:

—the permission is a better-not option

—a specific permission is always parasitical on a general (sarvadā prāpte) prohibition or negative obligation (in this case: it is prohibited to live elsewhere, in turn depending on the duty to serve).

Case 2:

Manu:

strīṇāṃ sukhodyam akrūraṃ vispaṣṭārthaṃ manoharam | maṅgalyaṃ dīrghavarṇāntam āśīrvādābhidhānavat || 2.33 ||

Medhātithi:
puṃsa ity adhikṛtatvāt strīṇām aprāptau niyamyate | sukhenodyate sukhodyam | strībālair api yat sukhenoccārayituṃ śakyate tat strīṇāṃ nāma kartavyam | bāhulyena strīṇāṃ strībhir bālaiś ca vyavahāras teṣāṃ ca svakaraṇasauṣṭavāb- hāvān na sarvaṃ saṃskṛtaṃ śabdam uccārayituṃ śaktir asti | ato viśeṣeṇopadiśy- ate | na tu puṃsām asukhodyam abhyanujñāyate |

So, girls lack the śakti to pronounce Sanskrit words, hence they need easy- to-pronounce names. This command is taught explicitly with regard to them because of their inability, but it does not mean that difficult names are permitted for men.

Noteworthy here:

—The opponent is suggesting that F(x/y)—>P(x/¬y) —Medhātithi explains that this is wrong. It is true that P(x/¬y)—>F(x/(y∧¬y)) but the opposite is not true.

Rights and adhikāra


Having permissions just as exceptions means that they cannot be used to ground the notion of right (as in Hansson 2013). What else can correspond to “rights”?

• 1. There does not need to be a corresponding term. The deontic horizon is, like any other partition of the cognitive world, arbitrary.

• 2. There can be functional equivalents, one of which is adhikāra, I think.

adhikāra is connected to ability (sāmarthya and śakti), in the sense that unless there is ability, there is no adhikāra. Differences: adhikāra also implies duty. Contexts in which adhikāra is discussed: poor people having adhikāra, because they still have the śakti, although they momentarily lack the sāmarthya (all in ŚBh ad 6.1.1–3); disabled people lacking adhikāra for sacrifices but having adhikāra for svādhyāya (TV ad 1.3.4).

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Rights in Mīmāṃsā and further steps in mapping the deontic horizon—Updated

I have been working for years on mapping the deontic space of Mīmāṃsā authors. In order to do that, I tried to find a balance between systematicity, for the purpose of which I need as many information as possible and I often take whatever I can from whatever source, including many different authors, and historical attention to individual authors.

In order to strike this balance, I tend to assume that by default the same deontic concepts are shared by all authors, unless and until the opposite is proven, either because someone has an explicitly competing theory (e.g., Maṇḍana’s iṣṭasādhanatā) or because they de facto do something different (like Medhātithi’s approach to permissions if compared to Kumārila’s).

This ongoing attempt has led my coauthors and myself to understand some basic elements applying to all deontic concepts, such as their dyadic nature (each command is always of the form O(x/y) and not just O(x) or F(x)). We also examined the non-identity relation between prohibitions and obligations (in short: F(x/y) is not tantamount to O(~x/y), but an ideal system will not have F(x/y) and O(~x/y) ceteris paribus) and that between permissions and other commands (again P(x/y) is not tantamount to ~F(x/y), but P(x/y) presupposes a previous either O(~x/T) or F(x/T), with T being more general than y). In other words, if something is permitted it means that one would naturally be inclined to do it, but that its performance had been prohibited (or that refraining from it has been prescribed). The state of affairs of something being already available to one as something one is inclined to do is generally captured by the expression “prāpti“. So, there is a permission only with regard to something prāpta and niṣiddha (or the opposite of which has been vihita). Furthermore, the analysis of permissions as being always “better-not” permissions has also made us able to discuss supererogations, which occur when, although a permission to do x is present, one still avoids doing it.

Now, some authors have suggested that P(x) with no prior negative obligations or prohibitions is needed because of making sense of rights. This led me to think about rights and their seeming absence in the deontic landscape of Mīmāṃsā and Dharmaśāstra authors. The starting point is that we should not expect the same concepts to be present in each deontic landscape. Hence, we shouldn’t be looking for an equivalent of a given concept in a different setting. Rather, we should be looking at the different systems that each deontic author construes. In Mīmāṃsā, there are no “rights” as Euro-American authors know them (and, after all, this might be a good idea and we may suggest that the category of “rights” is muddy and unclear!), but there are other concepts that are times overlapping. One of them is the idea of adhikāra.

This is discussed at length in relation to rituals in the context of PMS 6.1 and its commentaries and sub-commentaries. Basically, Śabara etc. observe that adhikāra presupposes ability, but have then to explain that temporary inability does not infringe on adhikāra. In this context, they speak of an external (bahirbhūta) inability (like, being poor or having a sprained ankle) and an intrinsic (ātmavarttin) one, which blocks the adhikāra (like an inborn disability). They seem to oppose therefore śakti (for the intrinsic ability) and sāmarthya (that can be temporary).

UPDATE (thanks to MS for raising the issue): Another thing that we have not looked into yet are the various types of prescriptions (utpatti-, viniyoga-, adhikāra– and prayogavidhi) and how they behave deontically.

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Various types of bādha (in epistemology, deontics, Śabara, Kumārila…)

As it is often the case for other terms (e.g., nitya or even pramāṇa), various terms which are used technically in the epistemological debates between, among others, Mīmāṃsā, Nyāya, and Buddhist epistemological school, also have a deontic-ritual background. This applies also to bādha, whose epistemological meaning is only the tip of the iceberg of its Mīmāṃsā use.

In epistemology, it seems to mean `invalidation’, whereas in deontics, it means `suspension’ (which could be again brought back to use). Could the two be reconciled? Yes, if only one considers that within the svataḥ prāmāṇya framework any invalidation is necessarily temporary.

As for Śabara’s vs Kumārila’s use of bādha, the first thing one notices is that Śabara deals with bādha within the latter part of the PMS-Bhāṣya, namely within the discussion of vikṛti ‘ectype’ rituals. That is, Śabara primarily discusses bādha as the blocking mechanism in case something of the archetype ritual does not extend to the ectype one. Therefore, Kumārila has to invent a new space for bādha while commenting on the balābala-adhikaraṇa within the first group of books in the PMS-Bhāṣya. There, Kumārila treats bādha as a general device, not related to the prakṛti-to-vikṛti extension. This treatment is then adopted also by later Mīmāṃsā authors (MBP, MNS, Āpadevī etc.).

Jhā (1942, chapter XXIX) mixes the two understandings insofar as he calls bādha `exclusion’ and introduces it as part of the prakṛti-to-vikṛti extension of details (corresponding to its role in the ŚBh), but then moves on (from end of p. 342 onwards) and discusses it in the light of later sources, influenced by Kumārila’s approach.

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From unfinished starting points to new balances

The common background of all Mīmāṃsā authors is based mainly on Jaimini’s Mīmāṃsā Sūtra (henceforth PMS) and Śabara’s Bhāṣya `commentary’ thereon (henceforth ŚBh). I refer to this phase in the history of Mīmāṃsā as ”common Mīmāṃsā”, since the authority of these texts was accepted by all later Mīmāṃsā authors.

Various later Mīmāṃsā authors rethought this inherited background, in particular, on two connected issues:

  1. How later Mīmāṃsā authors reconsidered the classification of obligations implemented in the early Mīmāṃsā
  2. What later Mīmāṃsā authors considered to be the real trigger for obligations

They will implement in both cases reductionistic strategies which, however, were based on very different presuppositions. They introduced to the background Mīmāṃsā new assumptions, although these were —according to the ancient Indian étiquette— concealed as (re)interpretations of the ancient lore.

As for No. 1, the Mīmāṃsā school operates presupposing that prescriptions could enjoin:

  • nitya-karman `fixed sacrifices’, to be performed throughout one’s life, such as the Agnihotra, which one needs to perform each single day
  • naimittika-karman `occasional sacrifices’, to be performed only on given occasions, e.g., on the birth of a son
  • kāmya-karman `elective sacrifices’, to be performed if one wishes to obtain their result, e.g., the citrā sacrifice if one desires cattle

Here one can see already how the scheme offers the chance for different interpretations, precisely according to one’s interpretation of No. 2, namely of the understanding of what is the real motivator of one’s action, as below:

elective specific desire
occasional occasion, generic desire
fixed generic occasion (being alive), generic desire
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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.