Ancient Indian Colonization in South-East Asia c10.20

c10.20

This verse means that like a fish in water the king could easily move through the different branches of learning named, because even among the learned he was the most skilful in all these subjects. These included Buddhist philosophy, Pāṇini's Grammar with Kāśikā, Ākhyāna, and Uttarakalpa of the Śaivas. There was besides the *Mīmāṁsa-ṣat-tarka* with which the list begins. When I first edited this inscription, I took it as *Mīmāṁsādi ṣaṭ-tarka*, to mean the six systems of Indian philosophy beginning with Mīmāṁsā. A learned Indian scholar² has since pointed out that the famous poet Rājaśekhara in his *Kāvya-mīmāṁsā* has used *ṣaṭ-tarka*, in a special sense, to mean the six logical systems of Buddha, Jaina, Chārvāka, Sāṅkhya, Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika. The expression *Mīmāṁsa-ṣaṭ-tarka* therefore means both Mīmāṁsā and the six systems referred to above, As Mīmāṁsā includes both Karma-mīmāṁsā and Jñāna-mīmāṁsā or Vedānta, and the Sāṅkhya includes both the atheistic school of Kapila and the theistic Yoga system, Mīmāṁsā and *ṣaṭ-tarka* taken together stand for all the commonly known schools of Indian philosophy, both Brāhmanical and non-Brāhmanical. This also follows from the fact that Rājaśekhara has divided the Pramāṇikas or the experts in the Pramāṇa Vidyā into two classes, Mīmāṁsakas and Tārkikas.