—Śālikanātha (around the 9th c.), a thinker of the Prābhākara subschool of Mīmāṃsā, has been incredibly influential for almost all Sanskrit philosophy

—a typical methodology of Sanskrit philosophers for finding the truth is examining definitions and refining them by eliminating what is wrong or superfluous and trying to find the perfect definition (see here for Śālikanātha’s refutation of the Buddhist definitions)

—concerning the issue of knowledge, Śālikanātha’s perfect definition of it sounds pretty minimalist: knowledge is experience. This is enough, he thinks, because it excludes memory (which is not experience) and because there is no need to exclude doubt or error. In fact, doubt is not a single cognition but a sum of two correct cognitions. Erroneous cognitions, in turn, do not exist as such, but are only incomplete cognitions. For instance, we might believe that something shiny we see on the beach is silver, whereas it is in fact mother-of-pearl. This is not a real mistake, since the “this” part of the cognition “This is silver” is correct. The “silver” part is just a memory, since it corresponds to the silver we have seen elsewhere and we have been reminded of because of the equally shiny mother-of-pearl. Thus, experience are always correct and “knowledge is experience” is a sufficient definition of knowledge.

What we are going to see today:
Śālikanātha’s definition of sense-perception

Why should we care?
1. Because Śālikanātha is a great thinker, who influenced almost all later Sanskrit philosophers.
2. Because Śālikanātha is an elegant writer, a pleasure to read.
3. Because Śālikanātha has interesting arguments to offer on the topic at stake.

On 3: One might think that the definition of “sense-perception” is easy and that there is no need to discuss it at length. We would probably all agree that it depends on sense-faculties and much of the disagreement has already been dealt with under the heading of the definition of knowledge (such as the issue of infallibilism).
However, this is not the case. First of all, Śālikanātha needs to discuss the (wrong, in his opinion) definitions coming from Dharmakīrti’s school, Nyāya and Mīmāṃsā itself. Much of these definitions is wrong because of reasons already discussed in connection with the definition of pramāṇa.

Accordingly, his definition of sense-perception will be minimalist: A direct experience (sākṣātpratīti) generated from the connection of the sense-faculties with the knowable items, i.e., substances, universals and qualities, with or without concepts:

sākṣātpratītiḥ pratyakṣaṃ meyamātṛpramāsu sā |

meyeṣv indriyayogotthā dravyajātiguṇeṣu sā ||

savikalpāvikalpā ca pratyakṣā buddhir iṣyate |

(Amṛtakālā v. 4–5ab)

Since the definition needs to contain nothing redundant, let us analyse each element of it:

• sākṣātpratītiḥ (“it is a direct cognition”): to exclude inference etc. (agreed upon by all schools)
• meyamātṛpramāsu sā (“it is about object, knower and knowledge”): sense-perception can grasp, besides substances, also qualities and even universals (agreed upon by Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā, against Dharmakīrti’s school). Śālikanātha specifies on p. 142 of the pramāṇapārāyaṇa that if one were not to accept that, there would not be anything left to cognise via sense-perception, since one never grasps substances on their own.
• meyeṣu indriyayogotthā (“it is generated by a contact of the sense-faculties with the objects”): against the idea of intellectual intuition (agreed upon by Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā, against Dharmakīrti’s school and Nyāya)
• dravyajātiguṇeṣu sā (“it is about substances, universals or qualities”): sense-perception can grasp, besides substances, also qualities and even universals (agreed upon by Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā, against Dharmakīrti’s school). Śālikanātha specifies on p. 142 of the pramāṇapārāyaṇa that if one were not to accept that, there would not be anything left to cognise via sense-perception, since one never grasps substances on their own.
• savikalpāvikalpā (“it is conceptual or non-conceptual”): it can be conceptual and non-conceptual (agreed upon by Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā, against Dharmakīrti’s school)

Next, Śālikanātha has to define what counts as perception. Possible candidates are (according to Dharmakīrti’s school):
1. sense-perception
2. mental perception (mānasapratyakṣa)
3. self-awareness (svasaṃvedana)
4. intellectual intuition (yogipratyakṣa)

1. is clearly accepted.

2. is, surprisingly and against Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā, accepted (see the discussion about meyamātṛpramāsu sā above). All cognitions are therefore immediately accessible to self-awareness.

3. is refuted. This might be slightly complicated, since manas is not defined as in Nyāya and Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā, namely as the inner sense faculty, which can grasp pleasure and pain. Śālikanātha succintly defines mānasapratyakṣa as “produced by the cognition through the sense-faculties together with the instant immediately following the one the instant (kṣaṇa) which has been previously cognised (by the sense faculties)”. The commentator, Jayapuri Nārāyaṇa Bhaṭṭa, explains that it is therefore produced by the object and the cognition together. The terminology and the topic itself make Śālikanātha steer here in the direction of discussing Dharmakīrti’s school. He then later (p 142 of the pramāṇapārāyaṇa) refutes it, explaining that it is nothing different than continuous perceptions (dhārāvāhikajñāna), like the ones we have while staring for a long time the same object. By contrast, the so-called mental perception that continues also once the contact with the sense faculties has ceased, is just no longer a case of knowledge, Śālikanātha explains.
4 is refuted. Why? Because what we think to be grasping directly but without the senses (e.g., the four noble truths during deep meditation) is nothing but our memory presenting us with some content we were already acquainted with. There is nothing new that derives from meditation itself. Claiming the opposite is something you can do for religious reasons, not on epistemological bases.

What I would like you to remember of this series?
—Go check Śālikanātha’s extensive Prakaraṇapañcikā if you want to make a stroll in philosophical landscapes, almost all topics are covered, and always with interesting ideas.
—”Knowledge is experience”: there is no error.
—Intellectual intuition is nothing but memory.

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)

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)

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)

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.

The second option is easy to defeat, since it is not the absence from home which does not make sense, but rather only the being alive of Caitra. Why should one in fact doubt the absence from home once one has seen that Caitra is not there?

The first option deserves, by contrast, a longer treatment. Śālikanātha argues that it is tantamount to an inference based on negative concomitance only (kevalavyatirekin anumāna). This requires a short explanation: According to the Indian theory of inference, the inference is valid if sādhya and hetu don’t just happen to co-occur by chance, but are rather linked by an invariable concomitance. This is checked through the co-occurrence of the same inferential reason in similar instances (called sapakṣa) and its absence in dissimilar instances (called vipakṣa).

A valid inference should have both a positive concomitance (called anvaya) and a negative one (called vyatireka). However, epistemologists have discussed also the deviant case of inferences which seem to have only an anvaya, because there is no vipakṣa (e.g. “Everything is a product” for the Diṅnāga-Dharmakīrti school) or only a vyatireka, because there is no sapakṣa (e.g., “Nothing is eternal, because permanence is nowhere to be found”, again for the Diṅnāga-Dharmakīrti school).

Śālikanātha contends that the latter type does not work, because in order to establish the absence of the inferential reasons from all the dissimilar instances, one should be able to check them one by one, which is impossible. By contrast, the negative concomitance can be established only on the basis of a previously established positive concomitance, just as it happens in the case of the concomitance of fire and smoke.

The next step is even more interesting, since Śālikanātha suggests that the negative concomitance is established on the basis of the positive one exactly through arthāpatti. In fact, it is through arthāpatti that we know that, given that whenever there is the inferential reason there is also the thing to be inferred. Then, given that the absence of the thing to be inferred could not be possible otherwise, one concludes that also the inferential reason must be absent.

Therefore, the solution proposed by the opponent does not work since it leads to a kevalavyatirekin inference which is, in turn, parasitical on arthāpatti, since one first needs to ascertain the positive concomitance and then use arthāpatti to come to the negative concomitance. Once one has known the negative concomitance, as observed by Kumārila, one might well perform an inference on the basis of the established concomitance, but one would only end up knowing something already known, namely that Caitra is out (see ŚV arthāpatti, especially v. 67 with Uṃveka’s and Pārthasārathi’s commentaries thereon and Sucarita’s commentary on v. 19).

As for the “connection with an outer place” (bahirdeśasambandha), this is not further specified, so that we don’t know whether it just means “connection with any place other than his house” or “connection with a specific place outside his house”.

In favour of the latter option come two considerations:

1. Uṃveka discusses once the type of invariable concomitance one would need to be able to establish in order to make the arthāpatti a case of inference and refers to the fact that one should be on the door’s threshold and see at the same time Caitra’s absence from home and his presence in the garden (see the translation and discussion of Uṃveka’s crucial commentary on ŚV arthāpatti 34 in Freschi and Ollett’s translation).
2. If “outside of house” just meant “not in the house”, then Śālikanātha’s point about having to check all dissimilar instances would not make sense, since one would just need to check the single dissimilar instance, namely Caitra’s home. Therefore, it must mean “connected with a specific place outside of home”.

Prabhākara’s Bṛhatī commentary on 1.1.25 starts with a discussion of the meaning of sentences in the Veda and in ordinary communication.

The main topic, however, comes immediately after that, namely: whether sheer padārthas can be linguistically conveyed on their own, apart from their being syntactically connected in a sentence meaning. The basic starting point is that vṛddhavyavahāra occurs through connected sentence-meanings, not through isolated word-meanings. Hence, the linguistic reality of connected sentence-meanings is evident, that of isolated word-meanings is not.

Prabhākara seems to say that isolated word-meanings are not linguistically conveyed, Śālikanātha states that they are remembered on the basis of words, but not denoted by words.

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.

Moreover, human beings also agree about the fact that words (and not complex texts only) are related to a distinct meaning. The relation between a word as meaningful unit and its meaning is fixed, as it is proved by our common experience of language. This experience 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? Mainstream Mīmāṃsā authors, departing from Śabara, claim, against Nyāya ones, that words convey universals (see ŚBh ad PMS 1.1.24: sāmānye padam “the word conveys the universal”). This is, again, confirmed, by our common experience, in which words figure again and again denoting the same element recurring in several particular items, namely their underlying universal aspect. For instance, the word “cow” denotes in every sentence in which it occurs the universal “cowness”, which is shared by all individual cows. However, this thesis seems at first sight to imply that words would never be able to convey a complex state of affairs on their own accord, and would therefore be almost useless. Human language would be constituted almost of extremely general statements about universals and, which is even more important for Mīmāṃsakas, no specific actions could be enjoined. In fact, each order presuppose a specification (one cannot bring the universal cowness, but only a particular cow). In order to solve this difficulty, Mīmāṃsakas claim that a complex state of affairs (viśiṣṭārtha in the Mīmāṃsā jargon) is conveyed by a sentence (see again, ŚBh ad PMS 1.1.24: viśeṣe vākyam ”the sentence conveys the specific”). This means that the sentence-meaning is more than the sheer sum of word-meanings, insofar as at the level of sentence meaning one moves from one level (that of universals) to the other (that of specific meanings). This solution, however, leads to a further question, namely: How are these two different levels reached? Do the same words lead to the one and then to the next?

The process of sentence‐signification, leading from words to the sentence‐meaning, is distinctly explained by the two main Mīmāṃsā sub-schools, Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā and Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā. Both subschools agree on the basic tenets seen so far, but they differ on the path leading from the words signifying universals to the sentence signifying a particular state of affairs. According to Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā authors, words conclude their function in denoting their own universal meanings (they ground this view in a statement by Śabara, describing words as nivṛttavyāpārāṇi `having concluded their function’, ŚBh ad 1.1.25). Thus, it is the word-meanings, conveyed by words, which convey the sentence-meaning once connected together.

One might (as did Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā authors) object that in this case the sentence meaning is no longer conveyed directly by words, but rather by their meanings and that it is therefore no longer strictly speaking linguistic. Thus, the sentence-meaning would no longer be conveyed through linguistic communication as a distinct instrument of knowledge. This might be a sheer terminological problem, but for Mīmāṃsā authors it has a much deeper relevance. In fact, Mīmāṃsā authors explain that only the Vedas can convey knowledge of dharma. This means that any knowledge of dharma obtained through another source is invariably unreliable. Therefore, if the sentence-meaning were not linguistic, then even the sentence-meanings about dharma would no longer be directly conveyed by Vedic sentences, and would therefore end up being unreliable.

Bhāṭṭa authors reply that the sentence meaning is indeed a function of words, although via their meanings. Bhāṭṭas therefore distinguish a direct denotation (abhidhā) of words, through which universals are denoted, and a secondary signification (lakṣaṇā), through which complex sentence meanings are conveyed.

Prābhākara authors object in three ways: 1. They claim that lakṣaṇā is possible only once the direct denotation is impossible (for instance, in the case of “The village on the Ganges”, one comes to understand that the village is on the Ganges’ bank because the primary meaning would be impossible). But what exactly is incongruous in the word meanings once connected? 2. How do word-meanings connect to each other? If they do it because the words bestow into them the capacity to connect to each other, then it is more economical to just postulate that the words themselves convey the sentence-meaning, without the intermediate step of the sentence-meaning. 3. If word-meanings can automatically connect among themselves, then why don’t they do it unless once in a sentence (in this connection it is important to recollect that artha means both a linguistically conveyed meaning and a cognitively acquired one)? A plausible answer to 1. would point to the fact that the connection of various universals leads in fact to an impossibility since, as in the above example, one cannot bring the universal cowness. One might also suggest that lakṣaṇā in the Bhāṭṭa account acquires a technical meaning, different from the one it assumes in accounts of implicature etc. As for 2. and 3., Kumārila Bhaṭṭa answers that word-meanings do in fact connect automatically and this this does actually occur even outside of sentences. The example Kumārila mentions will be discussed by generations of authors and will remain the only one discussed in this connection: A person sees an indistinct white shape, hears a neighing and perceives the sound of hooves. These three unconnected meanings automatically connect into the complex meaning ”A white horse is running”.

By contrast, Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā authors, and especially Prabhākara’s main commentator, Śalikanātha, state that words first get connected and then denote the specified sentence meaning only once connected. This assures that the sentence meaning can be said to be linguistically conveyed, since there is not the intermediary step of word-meanings, a conclusion which is very important for the Mīmāṃsā epistemology, regarding linguistic communication as a distinct instrument of knowledge (see the section above). However, this explanation altogether skips the role of word-meanings. Thus, Prābhākara authors have to explain the fact that the own meanings of single words appear to do have a role to play in the process, since there is an invariable concomitance between knowing the words’ individual meanings and knowing the sentence’s one. This tension between the opposing risks of atomism and holism is dealt with differently by various authors. Prabhākara seems to present the most basic version of the theory, where word-meanings just don’t play a role in the apprehension of the sentence-meaning. Śālikanātha and his Bhāṭṭa opponent Sucarita start discussing the role the memory of the individual word-meanings plays in the process. Words would accordingly cause one to remember their own meanings, then get related to one another and then denote the complex sentence-meaning. The word-meanings would therefore be recollected, but not denoted by words.

Words get connected into a complex sentence meaning through proximity, semantic fitness and syntactic expectancy. 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).

Do you think the Mīmāṃsā theories only make sense in their own context? Or do they look convincing even for people like us? Why (not)?

This process, called vyutpatti, is debated at length in the two subschools of Mīmāṃsā. It is first described by the Prābhākara Śālikanātha, who explains through it that the Prābhākara anvitābhidhāna theory must be right. In fact, the atomistic theory according to which one learns one by one the meaning of each single word is refuted by our common experience, in which we see that children or less experienced speakers learn how to speak by observing experienced speakers interact among each other through sentences, not words. Similarly, the holistic theory of Bhartṛhari leads to unacceptably anti-economic consequences, since one would need to postulate that each single sentence needs to be learnt separately, whereas we commonly see that speakers who master a given set of words can easily understand new sentences, if only they are composed of these same words. What remains open to debate, however, is how one moves from the experience of sentences to the understanding of the single word-meanings (see freschi01 for the different Bhāṭṭa and Prābhākara solutions).