May 2020 on this blog has mostly been dedicated to Śālikanātha. A short summary of the most important points we have seen in the last weeks:
Tag Archives: Śālikanātha Miśra
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)
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)
How to define valid cognition (against Buddhists) if you are Śālikanātha? (Updated)
The beginning of Śālikanātha’s Pramāṇapārāyaṇa is dedicated to a discussion of how to define pramāṇa ‘instrument of valid cognition’. As it was custom since Dignāga’s innovation in the philosophical style, Śālikanātha quotes and refutes several positions.
The first ones are various Buddhist positions. Dharmakīrti’s definition connects the criterion of avisaṃvāditva literally ‘being non-controversial’ but more likely ‘being non-erroneous’ to that of arthakriyā ‘causal efficacy’. Śālikanātha refutes it on the ground of the fact that this does not exclude smṛti ‘memory’, which can also be avisaṃvādin. At this point, various Buddhist voices try to fix this possible flaw in the definition. It is not clear to me how many of them are historically attested and how many are concocted by Śālikanātha as logically possible responses. Some of them claim that smṛti is excluded because it is conceptual (vikalpa), but this is a dangerous move, since Śālikanātha can immediately reply that, based on that, also inference should be refuted, since also inference is conceptual.
A further possibility is to say that smṛti is not pramāṇa because it lacks arthakriyā. But is this really the case? One might say that the object of smṛti is always something past and that it therefore cannot lead you to attain any present object. However, this is also true, in some sense, for anumāna (remember that in the case of anumāna you usually infer the cause from its effect and that inferring the effect from the cause is not a valid anumāna). One might correct the previous point by suggesting that in anumāna the inferential reason is connected to the probandum, which can therefore be said to be attained. However, this, again, holds true also for smṛti, since also in the case of smṛti there is a connection with the object, via mnestic traces (saṃskāra). Why should this be so different from the case of anumāna?
The sequence of voices makes it difficult for one to identify the main speaker and the various uttarapakṣin, but the main thread remains clear, namely:
- Dharmakīrti’s definition is too broad, since it does not exclude smṛti
- Other Buddhist attempts to exclude smṛti are futile, since they would end up excluding also anumāna
So, how can smṛti be excluded? Only through the Mīmāṃsā definition of pramāṇa, namely aprāptaprāpaka ‘causing one to understand something which was not known before’.
(cross-posted on the Indian Philosophy Blog, where you can read also some interesting comments)
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:
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It is impossible insofar as the absence of the one is invariably connected with the absence of the other.
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It is impossible insofar as the absence from home is impossible as long as one does not postulate the presence of Caitra outside.
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.
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.