Liberation in early Advaita Vedanta

by Aleksandar Uskokov | 2018 | 195,782 words

This page relates ‘Dharma and Ritual Causality’ of the study named “Scripture and the Hermeneutics of Liberation in Early Advaita Vedanta” which highlights how liberation (in Sanskrit: Moksha) is posited as the “highest good”—i.e., it represents freedom from the cyclical process of birth and rebirth. It further shows that Shankara’s doctrine emphasizes that liberation is solely derived from knowledge of Brahman.

Go directly to: Footnotes.

I opened this chapter with presenting puruṣārtha as a means of human happiness, and we saw that in its deepest structure, puruṣārtha and dharma had a similar nature: dharma was a means of human happiness very much like wealth, but it was specifically a Vedic means, that is, a means that harnesses Vedic laws of causality. We also saw that dharma in the restricted sense referred to Vedic ritual. To be even more specific, dharma was the principal ritual in a complex ritual performance, the part in which the offering is made, not, however, in isolation, but in its feature of teleologically organizing the whole ritual and harnessing it for the obtainment of the expected result. In this most restricted sense, dharma was the instrumental puruṣārtha as the principal act (pradhāna) in a ritual to which everything else was subordinate (śeṣa/aṅga/guṇa, an auxiliary), but which was itself subordinate to the expected result such as heaven, which result in its turn was subordinate to man (the non-instrumental puruṣārtha).[1] Dharma organizes the ritual through this principle of subordination, and its success depends on properly understanding the principle and on working out its details so that the result would be achieved.

The principle of subordination is quite straightforward, and it is stated in Mīmāṃsā-Sūtra attributed to Jaimini 3.1.2: one thing is auxiliary to another when it is for another.[2] Śabara first explains being for another as doing service for or providing help to another, upakāraka, but quickly proceeds to define it as complete dependence on another, such as that of a donkey or a slave on the master. The second was, really, the essential characteristic in Kumārila’s eyes. A man may drink water from a canal that has been dug up for irrigation, and that may help him every now and then, but it does not make the canal for drinking. The canal was dug for irrigation; irrigation is its telos, and the other helpful uses are merely incidental. The master-slave relation is, again, a useful illustration: while the master may do things for the slave, such as feeding him, he does not do them for the slave’s sake, but for his own benefit. An auxiliary is something that is for another and has no cause or ground or justification of being elsewhere than in the other.[3]

Let us see, now, how this principle of subordination works in a ritual and how the Veda corresponding to the ritual as its backbone is teleologically organized. A principal or superordinate element in a complex ritual performance must satisfy several criteria. First, as we saw in the beginning of the chapter, it must be directly related to human felicity: its performance or use must be objectively occasioned by man’s desire for happiness, not by the requirements of the ritual itself.[4] Second, the principal is not principal absolutely; it is subordinate to the result—it is for the sake of the result—which in its turn is subordinate to man. However, third, since its being for something else is objectively determined, in the context of the ritual performance it is not subordinate to anything, and everything else is subordinate to it. This is in virtue of the fact that only the principal is directly related to the expected result of the ritual, while everything else is vicariously so: it is the principal that is fruitful.[5] Fourth, the principal is typically an action—it is what someone does in the ritual and it is not the sacrificer himself, the offering, or any odd ritual element; specifically, it is the action of sacrificing, pouring into fire or giving that constitutes the central element of the ritual. It is that part of the sacrifice in which, for instance, clarified butter (ājya) or the sacrificial cake (puroḍāśa) are offered.[6] Fifth, it is not necessary that there be a single principal. In some of the major rituals, in fact, there are several principal ritual performances; they all must be, however, fruitful, directly related to the result of the ritual as a complex.[7] That an action is independently fruitful is determined by the application of the Mimāṃsā principles of scriptural interpretation.[8]

We will recall that the definition of an auxiliary was “being for another.” In the ritual context, an auxiliary is that which is for the good of the ritual, kratvartha in Sanskrit. Unlike the subordination of the principal, puruṣārtha, which is objectively determined by the need of man, a kratvartha is subordinate on scriptural grounds. In other words, that something serves the needs of the ritual action is so because there is a Vedic sentence which institutes such a fact, or because it is otherwise possible to interpret a Vedic text to that effect. Given that the principal element of the ritual is the ritual action or kriyā, the factors that most immediately participate in this action, called kārakas, perforce constitute auxiliary elements: the material offerings (dravya) such as the clarified butter and the sacrificial cake are auxiliaries in the sacrifice, as is the sacrificer himself. Though in an important sense the sacrificer is the ultimate principal of the sacrifice, since its result is for him while the sacrificial action is for the result, he is so as the enjoyer (bhoktṛ) of the results of action. As the agent (kartṛ), however, he is subordinate to the action. The divinities (devatā) to which the offerings are made are also auxiliaries to the ritual action, since they are not the beneficiaries of the ritual results but serve as mere nominal recipients of the offerings that the ritual as a sacrificial action must have in order to be a ritual.[9] Chatterjee puts this rather nicely: “[I]n a sacrifice, the deity is as important as a guest in the context of the act of hospitability.”[10]

No exhaustive account of this is necessary, however, and we need to note just two things.

(1) The central elements of a sacrifice are of two kinds, namely puruṣārtha and kratvartha; the first is directly related to and productive of the expected result, while the second directly serves the purpose of the first. (2) The principle of subordination is not exhausted with that, for the kratvartha elements have other things subordinate to them.

More important than this—and we need to note this point very well—is that not all actions in a ritual are primary actions. In fact, Mīmāṃsakas have grouped all ritual actions broadly in two but more specifically in three categories, in virtue of what it is that they produce. The twofold division is that between principal and auxiliary actions, and the criterion of division is whether the action is concerned directly with ritual elements—the agent, the offerings, etc.—or not. Closely tied with this is the nature of their result: (1) is it something immediately given or visible (dṛṣṭa); or (2) is it something which is not visible (adṛṣṭa) but must be postulated so that a part or the whole ritual will make sense. Let us expand a bit on this.

There are, to begin with, some ritual actions that produce very visible results (dṛṣṭa) and their shared characteristic is that they operate over ritual elements that are themselves already auxiliaries in the ritual complex. These actions have been grouped under four headings: (1) origination or utpatti, for instance when a rice paddy is made; (2) obtaining or prāpti, for instance when milk is got from a cow; (3) change or vikṛti, for instance when the solid clarified butter is melted; and (4) refinement or saṃskṛti, for instance when the rice paddy is sprinkled with water. We note, first, that they produce their result by operating on some of the ritual factors, for instance rice paddy the offertory. In doing so, they are auxiliaries to what is already subordinate to the principal ritual action of offering, so they themselves are auxiliary actions. We note, second, that the result of most of them is immediately evident: the action results in a rice paddy or milk. We note, third, that the fourth category, refinement, is the only one among the four which can produce an unseen result, an excellence added to the consecrated item in the form of suitability for ritual use, which is not necessarily empirically noticeable, as in the case of the consecration of the sacrificer. This fourth group also includes some intermediary actions with visible refinement as their result, such as threshing (avahanana) and grinding (peṣaṇa), and the blanket term that Śabara uses to refer to all forms of refinement, visible and invisible, is saṃskāra, or “preparation.”[11]

These four have come to be commonly called sannipātyopakārakas or aggregated helpers, in view of their fourth crucial characteristic, namely that their causal efficacy is absorbed by and terminated in the auxiliary ritual elements. This last feature of theirs is an instantiation of a general principle of Mīmāṃsā accounts of ritual causality, which is worth spelling out: causal efficacy terminates in the produced result and is vicariously carried over in the further process. Once this has happened, the action ceases being a means. I will have occasion to say a more about this below; as for the sannipātyopakārakas, to sum up, they are actions which produce visible or somehow palpable results and are subordinate to the ritual elements, which themselves are kratvartha or for the good of the ritual.[12] Their relation to their superordinate element is, however, immediate, and they are absolutely required for the result to obtain.

The second category of actions are the offertorial actions that we described as principal. Their differentia specifica is stated negatively: they are not meant to culminate in the preparation or the production of some substance.[13] They are not, in other words, one of the four sannipātyopakārakas whose causal efficacy extends up to their immediate superordinate ritual element, and they are recognized by the fact that they do not produce anything visible or tangible. Put differently, if what they produce immediately is accepted as their actual result, that would render the sacrifice purposeless. The visible result of the offertorial actions is ashes left from the sacrifice, but no one would perform a sacrifice to end up with ashes. Therefore, an invisible future result (adṛṣṭa) is postulated as their telos, such as heaven, wellbeing, or cattle.

However, in some complex Vedic rituals, several such offertorial actions are performed, and not all of them are said to bring a result. Therefore, a further division of these offertorial actions is introduced. Some are principal actions in the full sense, because they bring the ultimate result of the sacrifice.[14] Other offertorial actions, however, are mentioned in the proximity to the fruitful actions, but are unrelated to a result. They are considered auxiliaries to the principal actions in the full sense.[15] They are also principal in a way because they are full ritual acts, to which ritual elements such as the sacrificer or the offerings are auxiliary—in form they are hardly distinguishable from the principal proper—but they do not bring heaven or cattle.

Therefore, by the application of the Mīmāṃsā principles of interpretation, they can be related to a principal proper and serve its purpose rather than the immediate good of man.[16] They are, thus, for the good of the ritual (kratvartha), while only the principal proper is for the good of man (puruṣārtha). Unlike the sannipātyopakārakas which are removed from the principal by the ritual element to which they are directly subordinate, such as the sacrificial cake or the sacrificer, they are directly related to the principal. For this reason, they have received the appellation of ārād-upakārakas or direct helpers.[17] However, they are related to the principal through postulation of contribution to its results, and not naturally and indispensably, like the sannipātyopakārakas are related to their superordinate element. Although the second are removed from the principal by their superordinate element whereas the first are not, they express a closer, essential relationship. We ought to note this concept very well, as it will play a crucial role in Śaṅkara’a making sense of the role of ritual on the one hand and renunciation on the other in the pursuit of liberation.

To sum up, then, all actions performed in a Vedic ritual are of broadly two and specifically three kinds: (1) some are auxiliary outright as they operate over ritual elements, which are themselves subordinate to the principal in the ritual, and are called sannipātyopakārakas; (2) others are principal outright, the offertorial fruitful actions, and are called puruṣārtha; (3) finally, there are the offertorial non-fruitful actions, principal to ritual elements yet subordinate to the puruṣārtha actions; they are called ārād-upakārakas and are kratvartha. That the ārād-upakārakas were not considered fruitful did not mean, of course, that they do not contribute anything to the ritual. That would render them purposeless, the worst nightmare of a Mīmāṃsaka. We will address this a little later in the chapter, but now I want to speak to a more pressing question.

Footnotes and references:

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[1]:

I use the pradhāna-śeṣa pair here, but Mīmāṃsā uses several other terms, mukhya for the first and guṇa and aṅga for the second. See Clooney 1990-98-100. See also Kumārila’s Tantra-Vārttika on Śabara’s Mīmāṃsā-Sūtra-Bhāṣya 3.1.2, II.653: “Because the word śeṣa can express many meanings, such as ‘excess,’ etc., here it is used as a synonym for aṅga, guṇa, dharma etc.” śeṣa-śabdasyānekādhikādy-artha-vacanatvād ihāṅga-guṇa-dharmādi-paryāya-vācitva-parigrahārtham.

[2]:

śeṣaḥ parārthatvāt.

[3]:

na śeṣo’nyaḥ parārthatvān na ca hetv-antareṇa saḥ. Kumārila’s Tantra-Vārttika on Śabara’s Mīmāṃsā-Sūtra-Bhāṣya 2.1.5, p.533.

[4]:

See Mīmāṃsā-Sūtra attributed to Jaimini 4.1.1 and 4.1.5 and Śabara thereon.

[5]:

“That which is connected with the result is the principal, while that which is related to the principal is the subsidiary.” pradhānaṃ phala-saṃbandhi tat-saṃbandhy aṅgam iṣyate. Kumārila’s Tantra-Vārttika on Śabara’s Mīmāṃsā-Sūtra-Bhāṣya 2.1.1, p.266.

[6]:

Mīmāṃsā-Sūtra attributed to Jaimini 4.2.27 defines these actions as those that bring about a connection between the substance that is offered and the deity to which it is offered: yajati-codanā dravya-devatā-kriyaṃ samudāye kṛtārthatvāt. The general term is “to sacrifice,” but it refers to all forms of principal action, which Śabara lists as three: sacrificing, pouring and offering, yajati dadāti juhotīty evaṃ-lakṣaṇam. The next sūtra defines pouring or homa as identical with sacrificing, with the aditional element of pouring liquids, tad-ukte śravaṇāj juhotir āsecanādhikaḥ syāt. Śabara defines “giving” in the comment as giving up one’s ownership and establishing a relation to the ownership of another, ātmanaḥ svatva-vyāvṛttiḥ parasya svatvena sambandhaḥ. Giving up (utsarga) is the common element of the three.

[7]:

See, for instances, Mīmāṃsā-Sūtra attributed to Jaimini 4.4.34 and Śabara thereon, as well as the whole adhikaraṇa, 4.4.29-38, in which the principle of fruitfulness is associated with a sacrifice being a primary and is ascribed to several distinct sacrifices within the complex Darśa-pūrṇamāsa because all of them are said to be fruitful.

[8]:

See Śabara on Mīmāṃsā-Sūtra attributed to Jaimini 4.1.5.

[9]:

Clooney 1988 is a fine analysis of the role of devatās in Mīmāṃsā. They are purely textual figures, non-corporeal and not actually sitting in sacrifices, and their existence is “a strictly linguistic requirement, ensuring the intelligibility of the sacrifice through what is said …” (p.283).

[10]:

1992:171.

[11]:

On Mīmāṃsā-Sūtra attributed to Jaimini 2.1.6. Saṃskāra, of course, has felicitously a semantic range much broader than that or refinement. See Kataoka 1999 for a most accessible account of saṃskāras.

[12]:

There are minor differences of opinion between the Bhāṭṭas and the Prābhākaras about them, concerning mainly how they are instituted by the Vedas, into which we need not go. See Prakaraṇa-Pañcikā chapter 13 in Pandurangi 2004. My account of the nature of the sannipātyopakārakas is based on Kumārila’s Tantra-Vārttika on Śabara’s Mīmāṃsā-Sūtra-Bhāṣya 1.2.7.

[13]:

Mīmāṃsā-Sūtra attributed to Jaimini 2.1.7 and Śabara thereon.

[14]:

Mīmāṃsā-Sūtra attributed to Jaimini 4.4.34: tat punar mukhya-lakṣaṇaṃ yat phalavattvam; that is characterized as the primary which is fruitful.

[15]:

tat sannidhāv asaṃyuktaṃ tad-aṅgaṃ syāt: that which is in its proximity but unrelated [to a result] is its subsidiary. Ibid.

[16]:

Śabara on Mīmāṃsā-Sūtra attributed to Jaimini 4.1.5.

[17]:

See, for instance, Śabara’s Bhāṣya on the Mīmāṃsā-Sūtra 2.2.3, II.483 on the distinction between the primary actions, which are directly related to the result, and their direct helpers, which are close to the primary which is fruitful. “Therefore, they [the primary actions], are related to the result; because the āghāra and other sacrifices are close to the [primary] which is fruitful, they are its direct helpers.” tata eṣāṃ phala-sambandhaḥ, phalavat-sannidhes tv āghārādīny ārād-upakārakāṇīti. See also Kumārila’s Tantra-Vārttika on Śabara’s Mīmāṃsā-Sūtra-Bhāṣya 2.1.7.

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