8. Language and Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā

Kumārila’s philosophy of language was fully consistent with the model of the sacrifice and its ritual causality. Words are meaningful intrinsically and before they combine in a sentence. In a sentence, word meanings are harnessed by the verb, absorbed, and finalized in a new, sentential meaning. Cognition also proceeds from recognizing individual word, to recognizing their meaning, to understanding what the whole sentence or passage stands for. That much was already said by Śabara: “Words, denoting their own objects, cease their [individual] function, and then the understood word meanings give rise to sentence meaning.”^[1] Word meanings are employed by the bhāvanā of the verb to form a coherent sentence meaning, but they mean whatever they mean before that. This has become known as the abhihitānvaya-vāda, or the doctrine of association of word denotations in a sentence. It is important to see how this understanding corresponds to the theory of mediate ritual causality which Kumārila developed, in which individual things and small and large actions of different kinds are gradually absorbed in the final action in a process of refinement and maturation, giving up their individual causality only to keep it.^[2] This idea will have a massive significance for Advaita soteriology and the notion of mahā-vākya.

The rival school of Mīmāṃsā, the school of Prabhākara, had a different approach to language, tied to a different approach to ritual as well. To begin with, whereas for Kumārila the verbal suffix in the sentence ultimately expressed an urging for the performance of action by presenting it as a means to a desirable end,^[3] for the Prābhākaras Vedic injunctions issue a mandate or niyoga to an individual to perform a ritual, having their own purpose in view, namely perpetuating ritual performance.^[4] To secure such performance, an injunction must have an object, something real that it produces as an outcome, so that the agent of the sacrifice, coming with his own purpose such as happiness, would take up the enjoined action. The injunction, in other words, issues a mandate, but it needs to provide all the requirements so that the mandate would be carried out. This mandate is not unconditional or categorical, as it was characterized by early scholarship,^[5] but pertains to someone for whom the performance is relevant in virtue of the desire for the result, or some other criterion, i.e., someone who has an adhikāra for the ritual action.^[6] The injunction cannot select just anyone, say a Śūdra, and present him with an unconditional obligation, as Kant’s categorical imperative would, because the successful performance of the mandate requires that one understands the mandate as pertaining to oneself, and that happens through the object of the agent’s desire, such as heaven. But, that is how far the injunction goes. Whereas Kumārila expected the injunction to convey somehow that the performance of the ritual action can bring about the expected result, Prabhākara saw that as already covered by the desire for the result.

To understand this clearly, think of the sentence, “She who wants a good life should pursue education.” The central message which the sentence wants to communicate for Kumārila would be how good education is, because no thinking person would take up a course of action unless first convinced that it is for one’s good. Prabhākara, on the other hand, would take that requirement satisfied by the desire for a good life, in which case the core message of the sentence would be that education must be pursued if one wants a good life; i.e., one must take up that course of action. To be, now, specific, the taking up of the course of action is the mandate issued by a Vedic injunction (niyoga).^[7] The specific form of action, in our case education, is the instrument by which one can accomplish the objective, a good life, but it is also the direct object of the urging expressed by the injunction. For Prābhākaras, contrary to the Bhāṭṭas, the specific action and not the result is the one element that needs to be produced (kārya), although the result remains superordinate to the action. Ultimately the educational system has its own purpose, to perpetuate itself. The good life which it promises is not superordinate to it, but it is superordinate to the performance of the action of study on the part of the student.

Now, there is one difference between ordinary, worldly mandates, such as the one of education and a good life, and Vedic mandates, and that is that the result does not follow immediately upon the completion of the mandate—one is not seen going to heaven after the ritual—owing to which something permanent must be postulated over and above the action expressed by the mandate, that remains after the performance of the action and eventually brings about the result.^[8] This additional element is knowable solely from the Veda—it is, in fact, what makes the Veda a pramāṇa—and is why the Vedic mandate is called apūrva, unprecedented, unknowable otherwise.^[9]

Prābhākaras clearly followed the old Mīmāṃsā understanding of ritual causality, where what matters is to get the ritual structure right and leave the rest to the Veda.^[10] If the Veda says that he who performs the sacrifice goes to heaven, then one had every right to believe so. There is no need for grand theories of ritual causality or general theories of maturation. There is something permanent which remains after the sacrifice, and nothing more than this is required.

This central role of the structural unity of the sacrifice influenced the Prābhākara philosophy of language, in which words do not initially mean anything individually, but collectively first produce a single sentence meaning and only then acquire individual word meanings. Words are individually meaningful only in sentences, when they are syntactically related to other words. This understanding of language has become known as the

anvitābhidhāna-vāda or the doctrine of denotation as single correlated meaning. This unified and unique sentence meaning is action, of the obligation kind (kārya), qualified by its contributory factors (kārakas), and a sentence without a verb expressing such an obligation cannot be construed as unitary and cannot express meaning. If a sentence does not obtain a meaning, neither can the individual words. It is, in fact, impossible to even learn what individual words mean unless they form part of such a sentence expressing obligation, because learning language happens through observing how elders deal with one another through commands.^[11]

Such an attitude to ritual action and language meant that Prābhākaras did not care much for the arthavādas, except for the fact that they happened to be part of the Veda. The ākāṅkṣā or the syntactic expectancy of a sentence expressing action is discharged once all the contributory factors are supplied for the structural unity of the ritual to obtain. If some of the factors are missing, they must be supplied (a process called adhyāhāra), but once that is done, there is no natural ākāṅkṣā anymore and for any other words that happen to be in the vicinity. For instance, for the adjective “white” for a “cow,” an ākāṅkṣā must be assumed just because the word happens to be there.

Such was the case with the arthavādas as well: they do not bring anything real to the ritual action, but are in proximity and need to be accounted for. Since verbal forms that do not express obligation, such as those in the present tense, do not have ākāṅkṣā either, the arthavādas are construed with their proximate injunctions. This attitude is well exemplified by an objection (pūrva-pakṣa) which Śālikanātha characterized as “half-conclusion”: there is no real loss if the arthavāda portion of the Veda has no validity, but there would be an enormous loss if the injunctions, by association with something invalid, would lose validity too.^[12] This is a “half” conclusion because there is nothing wrong with it essentially, except that it puts the whole of the Veda in jeopardy and through that the injunctions themselves, and so it is necessary that the arthavādas do get some validity, though nothing would be lost without them. They are, therefore, construed along with an injunction, in sheer view of the fact that they happen to be around.

Śālikanātha applied the same reasoning regarding the Upaniṣadic descriptions of Brahman.^[13] An Upaniṣadic statement (vedānta-vākya) such as “Brahman is awareness, bliss” must be completed with some injunction expressing an obligation, for otherwise its words will not even obtain reference. If it is possible to supply them with some such obligation, all good and well. Otherwise, the disassociation of the Upaniṣadic statements from injunctions will simply mean that they remain inexpressive and will bring no real harm.^[14]

Equally radical was the Prābhākara understanding of the knowledge of the Self. Sureśvara paraphrased eloquently this understanding in his Sambandha-Vārttika.^[15] As a padārtha or a common category, the Self was not at all in the domain of knowledge from linguistic utterances, śabda. The Self was like rice, a thing whose properties we already know, but which we use in ritual through the fact that it becomes an auxiliary to the action of offering.^[16] The Veda is a pramāṇa strictly on the mandate or niyoga that an action of some kind be performed. Through that mandate, the only new thing that the Veda says about rice qua rice is that it is usable in the relevant ritual, serviceable to the mandated action; in other words, that it is an auxiliary.^[17] The Self is, like rice, otherwise known, and its true nature is recognized by the aid of reasoning that proceeds by examination of what is permanent and what changes (anvaya-vyatireka) in its three states—waking, sleep and deep sleep.^[18] The proper pramāṇa for knowing the Self is pratyabhijñāna, recognition, which was a mode of perceptual awareness. The idea of pratyabhijñāna as a mode of perception was developed in the school of Nyāya, and we may quote Chatterjee on this with profit:

To recognize thus means to cognize that which we are aware of having cognized before. Pratyabhijñā is recognition in this sense. It consists in knowing not only that a thing is such-and-such but that it is the same thing that we saw before.^[19]

Pratyabhijñāna was a mode of perception in which the percept is qualified by traces of former percepts, and it was the pramāṇa for knowing the Self.^[20] Through reasoning, these traces of former percepts should be removed, at which point the pure Self alone remains. The Self is known through recognition assisted by reasoning, and the Veda has no say in this: if it does say things about the Self, as it does, the corresponding scriptural cognition is a form of appearance present to our consciousness, pratibhā, but it is not a veridical cognition produced by a pramāṇa.^[21] This does not mean that it is false awareness, but it is repeating something that is already known. The only new thing that the Veda can say about the Self is that it is auxiliary to the action of ritual or meditation.^[22]

Footnotes and references:

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[1]:

padāni hi svaṃ svaṃ padārtham abhidhāya nivṛttavyāpārāṇi. athedānīṃ padārthā avagatāḥ santo vākyārthaṃ gamayanti. Śabara’s Bhāṣya on the Mīmāṃsā-Sūtra 1.1.25, I.96.

[2]:

Kumārila’s doctrine of sentence meaning is developed in the Vākya chapter of the Kumārila’s Śloka-Vārttika

[3]:

The theory was fully worked out by Maṇḍana Miśra, who argued that the śabda-bhāvanā expresses that the action has the property of being a means of something desirable, iṣṭa-sādhanatā. See David 2013 for a very lucid account of this.

[4]:

This account is indebted most of all to Yoshimizu 1994 and Hiriyanna 1972:85-96; I have also profited from McCrea 2000b.

[5]:

See Nakamura 1994 for a comparison of niyoga with Kant’s categorical imperative. While Prabhākara’s account of obligation is deontic, its characterization in Kantian terms is wrong on several important counts.

[6]:

The desire would pertain to the rituals known as kāmya-karma, which were meant for a specific result such as heaven or cattle. The very belonging to one of the three classes would constitute the criterion for the performance of the mandatory rites, nitya-karma, which such a member of the three classes would need to perform till the end of life.

[7]:

atrābhidhīyate—niyogaḥ karmaṇi niyuṅkta iti na samyag avadhṛtaṃ bhavatā. ārambhe hi puruṣaṃ niyuṅkte, na karmaṇi. Bṛhatī 2.1.5, III.321.

[8]:

Hiriyanna 1972:92-3.

[9]:

na pūrvam apūrvam. pūrvam tad ucyate yad avagatam prāk. yat tu kenacid prāg anavagataṃ pratīyate tad apūrvam. tathā-bhūtaś ca vidhy-arthaḥ. Ṛju-Vimalā 2.1.5, III.312.

[10]:

Clooney is, therefore, right in claiming as much. 1990:245-53.

[11]:

Śālikanātha’s Vākyārtha-Mātṛkā is one grand statement of this philosophy. See Sarma 1987, 1988, and 1990.

[12]:

tatra rāddhāntaikadeśyāha–mā bhūt tasya prāmāṇyaṃ, tasya kevalasyārthāvada-bhāgasya bhavatu apramāṇatā, na kācit kṣatiḥ. nanu tadāpramāṇye vidhy-uddeśasyāpi jñāta-prāmāṇyasya aprāmāṇyāpattir mahatī kṣatiḥ. Ṛju-Vimalā 1.2.1, II.2.)

[13]:

Śālika developed his account as a response to Maṇḍana Miśra’s Brahma-Siddhi, but he was clearly spelling out an understanding which must have been much older than this. Śaṅkara and Sureśvara are both aware of this construal of the Upaniṣadic statements and argue against it (see, for instance Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.3.1 and Sureśvara’s Naiṣkarmya-Siddhi 1.14-19). All we know with certainty about Śālika is that he was later than Maṇḍana, whom he directly quotes and attacks, and earlier than Vācaspati (see, for instance, Acharya 2006:xxi). Śālika’s critique of the descriptive sentences in the Upaniṣads concerning Brahman is found in his Ṛju-Vimalā on Prabhākara’s Bṛhatī on 1.1.2.

[14]:

evaṃ sarva-padānāṃ kāryānvitārthābhidhāyakatvād yadi vedānteṣu kāryaṃ yogyam adhyāhārādibhir labhyate, tadā kāryārthataiva vedānta-vākyānām api; atha na, tato’nabhidhāyakataiva vyutpatti-virahāt. ato vidhi-nirākaraṇam api vedānteṣu na kṣatim āvahati. Ibid.

[15]:

Sureśvara’s Sambandha-Vārttika 440-454. The doctrine is presented as of “those who are enamored with mandate as the sole reference,”—niyogārthaika-rāginaḥ (454).

[16]:

“Others say: because the Self is a category, it is knowable by other means, not from scripture, like other categories such as rice.”—anya āhuḥ padārthatvāt pramāṇāntara-gamyatām | ātmano nāgamāt siddhir vrīhyādy-anya-padārtha-vat. Sureśvara’s Sambandha-Vārttika 440.

[17]:

Sureśvara’s Sambandha-Vārttika 451-454.

[18]:

Sureśvara’s Sambandha-Vārttika 441. Śabara, in fact, argued in Mīmāṃsā-Sūtra attributed to Jaimini 1.1.5 against the Vijñānavādin opponent that the Self was self-evident, known to oneself through the recognition of one’s persistence through time, but eminently private and not available to intersubjective perception.

[19]:

Chatterjee 2008:188.

[20]:

Cf. Jhalakikar and Abhyankar, 1928:543: tal-lakṣaṇaṃ tu indriya-sahakṛta-saṃskāra-janya-jñānatvam. … pratyabhijñāyām ātmā viṣayaḥ iti siddhāntaḥ.

[21]:

“It is from linguistic utterance that a mere phenomenon arises, not from a pramāṇa;” tataś ca pratibhā-mātraṃ śabdād iti na mānataḥ. Sureśvara’s Sambandha-Vārttika 450.

[22]:

Ibid, 452-453.