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Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v1.c7.s7.t14: Mimamsa

Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v1.c7.s7.t14

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Mimamsa

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One of the six schools of Brahmanistic philosophy in ancient India is Mimamsa. The Chinese term弥曼差for it is a transliteration from Sanskrit Mīmāṃsā, a word meaning “investigation”. It became an independent philosophical school in ca 2nd century BCE. It was introduced into China along with Buddhism and had exerted a certain influence upon ancient Chinese thinking circles.

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Origin and Development

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The school of Mimamsa mainly focused upon the studies of sacrifices and the related rules of the rituals of Brahmanism. Ancient Indians prized Vedic literature such as *Brahmana* and specialised in various practices in sacrifice. Such researchers gradually formed a school known as Pūrva Mīmāṃsā (“prior” inquiry), or Karma-Mīmāṃsā. It was later called Mimamsa for short.

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Jaimini flourishing in ca 2nd century BCE is believed to be the founder of the Mimamsa school. His *Mimamsa Sutra* summed up the general rules in use. The extant *Mimamsa Sutra* was finalised in ca 1ˢᵗ century CE and later mimamsakas made some notable contributions.

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*Sabara-bhasya*, a major commentary on *Mimamsa Sutra*, was composed by Sabara in ca the 5th century CE. The school reached its height with thinkers Kumarila Bhaṭṭa and Prabhakara flourishing in ca 7ᵗʰ-8ᵗʰ century CE. Both of them had written extensive commentaries on Sabara’s *Mīmāṃsāsūtrabhāṣyam*. Kumārila Bhaṭṭa wrote *Slokavarttika*, *Tantra-varttika* and *Tuptika*, and Prabhakara wrote *Brhati* and *Laghri* on the *Bhasya* of Sabara. They formed two factions of the Mimamsa school. Their commentaries added some new concepts to the theory contained in *Mimamsa Sutra*. Both of them and their followers exerted substantial influence in the history of Indian thought and became two representative doctrines of Uttara Mīmāṃsā. Madhava expounded the thinking of the Mimamsa school in the 14ᵗʰ century CE. Appaya Diksita and Apadeva were two important figures of Uttara Mimamsa school in the 16th-17th century CE.

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The influence of the Mimamsa school was not very apparent in modern India. The sacrificial practices it had advocated was absorbed into some rituals of Hinduism.

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Major Doctrines

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The main theory of the Mimamsa school includes sabda-nityata-vadin and pramanas in *Mimamsa Sutra* and its commentaries. After the 7ᵗʰ century CE, some new doctrines were added, mainly epitomised by Kumarila Bhaṭṭa and Prabhakara’s padartha and their refutation of theism. Sabda means language, conception or knowledge, the Vedic language or knowledge in particular. According to the Mimamsa school, concepts and knowledge were innate, not

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*Mimamsa Sutras of Jaimini (front cover)*

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man-made, everlasting and absolutely right. Words and concepts in general are manifestation of and rooted in sabda. It asserts that words denote classes and not individuals; individuals may perish, but words can be eternal. If words were not eternal, but were destroyed as soon as they were uttered, human beings would be unable to speak to one another normally, and listeners would be unable to understand the meaning of speakers. Sabda-nityatavadin is a kernel concept used by the Mimamsa school to prove that the Vedic revelations are eternal and absolutely right, thus asserting that the Mimamsa school holds a significant status among various schools of Indian philosophy.

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Pramana is the right way or approach to obtain correct cognitions. Most ancient Indian schools have their own pramanas, centering on how to obtain correct cognition or prajna regarding objects in concern.

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Vrttikara, a commentator of *Mimamsa Sutra*, mentions six pramanas: perception, inference, comparison, verbal testimony, implication, and non-apprehension. His ideas are learned from the *Sabara-bhasya*, and are recognised and developed by later Mimamsa scholars. Perception proceeds directly from sense-contact with an external object in the world and therefore is direct apprehension. Inference is knowledge gained through the knowledge of invariable concomitance of two entities. The relation was based upon inference that must be unfailing, true and permanent, such as that which subsists between the cause and its effect, whole and part, substance and quality, class and individuals. Inferential argument consists of three parts: statement of the case; statement of the cause; and the major premise, which gives the general rule with the corroborative instance. Comparison is knowledge gained through similarity between two objects. Verbal testimony, also named Vedic testimony, is knowledge gained from reliable and authoritative personalities. For the Mimamsa school, the paramana of the Vedas is the only source of knowledge of dharma, and only Vedic sentences should be considered as pramana. But others think that even in conventional usage we have knowledge from words. The Vedas and Upanisads are called Shruti because they are eternal and without any human author. They were directly revealed to the Rishis who were seers of the truth. Verbal cognition is defined as the cognition of something not present to the senses, produced by the knowledge of words. Implication is knowledge gained through incompatibility of two facts without adding a third one. The facts observed remain inconsistent or doubtful until the assumption of another thing is made. Non-apprehension is admitted by Kumarila, after Vrttikara, as an independent source of knowledge. It is a means of knowledge with reference to the object negated.

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Padartha

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The doctrines of the Mimamsa school were enriched to a certain extent after the 7ᵗʰ century CE, for it has absorbed some theories of other schools. The influence mainly came from padartha. The Pūrva Mīmāṃsā school did not put forth considerable perspectives upon types or forms of things in the world. Starting from Kumarila and Prabhakara, the Mimamsa school began to show interest in the formation of things, accepted and transformed the padartha of the Vaisesika school. According to Kumarila, the phenomena of the world can be divided into five padarthas: dravya, guna, karma, samanya, abhava. Prabhakara believed that the phenomena of the world can be divided into eight padarthas. The division of padarthas by the Uttara Mimamsa school was not substantially different from that of the Vaisesika school. The padartha theory focuses upon phenomena in nature and formation of things in the world, and is of importance in the history of ancient Indian philosophy.

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Criticism of Theism

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Theoretically, the Uttara Mimamsa school manifested obvious tendency of atheism. This was related with its apurva doctrine. The Mimamsa school believed in the effect of sacrifice, trusting that sacrifice could bring about beneficial power to human beings. The power was named apurva which had not been there before sacrifice. If one claimed there was God, he had to admit God's supernatural power and that it was not apurva but God who played a role between sacrifice and effect, thus denied the effectiveness of sacrifice. Consequently, the Mimamsa school was clearly opposed to the concept that God was the maker of the world. Kumarila's *Slokavarttika* is a typical work criticising theism. The starting-point of the Mimamsa school's criticism of theism was to maintain the authority of Vedic sacrifice, and prevent from any negation of the effectiveness of Vedic sacrifice because of admitting God's creative function. While criticising theism, the Mimamsa school also denied the doctrine that the world was maya or unreal, holding that maya-vada or sunya-vada was groundless.

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Dissemination and Influence in China

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The thinking of the Mimamsa school was introduced into China along with Buddhism. The ideas of this school, called jnana-vada or vidyavada, are often intermingled with Vedic or Vedantic thought in Chinese Buddhist scriptures, for both the Mimamsa and Vedantic schools were of orthodox Brahmanism or philosophic system in addition to the fact that all those doctrines were rooted in Vedic literature. When discussing the mode of inference, Buddhist Hetuvidya often took the sabda-nityatavadin or sabda-anityata-vadin of the Mimamsa school for cases, and thereby actually disseminated Mimamsa ideas to the Chinese.

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In modern China, the academic circles have also attached importance to the Mimamsa school. Some related works such as *Mimamsa Sutra* and *Slokavarttika* have been translated into Chinese in abridged versions. In works regarding Indian philosophy by Chinese scholars, the Mimamsa school is generally discussed. A couple of universities in China have courses discussing the Mimamsa school.

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*(Yao Weiqun)*

Cites (3)