5. The Concept of Mind in Pūrvamīmāṃsa

Jaimini [400 B.C.] founded the Mīmāṃsa school of thought. Jaiminīya sūtras laid the foundation of this system. It was developed into two different schools headed by Kumarila and Prabhākara. Kumarilabhatta in his Tantravārtika, gives the meaning of the word ‘mīmāṃsa’ as ‘revered thought’ or ‘solution’ of some problems by critical examination of grounds’. It is based on the interpretation of the Vedas. This system offers a solution of the problem of karma by critical examination. Thus it is also called Karma Mīmāṃsa. The earlier portion of the Vedas includes mantra and Brahmana called karmakāṇḍa. Mīmāṃsa and Vedanta are considered as allied systems of thought. Purvamīmāṃsa consists of two schools namely Bhatta School and Prabhakara School. Kumarila Bhatta was the founder of Bhatta School of Mīmāṃsa and Prabhakara was the founder of Prabhakara School of Mīmāṃsa.

Mīmāṃsa accepts the existence of soul as the essence of human personality. This soul is entirely different from the body, sense and the buddhi.

“Soul is the first factor of personality and includes mind. Mind is the internal sense organ by which the self can perceive its qualities. It is an unconscious instrument of the self and is its agent. Though the mind is all-pervading, it is limited by the entire body and serves as the organ of internal perception. Both self and mind are all-pervading and their conjunction is natural and not resulted by any action.”^[1]

The Prabhakara Mīmāṃsaka System considers mind to be an eternal substance. It proves the existence of mind by pointing out the qualities of the self such as buddhi, pain, pleasure etc which would never become manifest but for the activity of mind. The Mīmāṃsaka view of mind resembles the Nyāya–Vaiśeṣika view. The self has nine special qualities namely, cognition, pleasure, pain, desire, aversion, volition, merit, demerit and impression which are produced by its conjunction with manas, the internal organ. Self is the inherent cause and mind is the non inherent cause because self depends upon its conjunction with mind. This mind-soul contact is generated by a movement of the mind due to the effort of the soul or its merit and demerit produced by its previous actions. The action of the mind is not the inherent cause of cognition, since it will require another action of the mind as its non-inherent cause. So the self is the inherent cause of cognition and the mind-soul contact is their non-inherent cause. The manas is the internal organ of the self: it has got only an atomic dimension. It is the organ of perception of pleasure, pain, desire, aversion, and volition. It supervises the functions of the external sense organs. It is eternal and capable of quick movement. Mīmāṃsaka thus follows the idea of perception by Nyāya Vaiśeṣika. It is that the mind is the internal sense organ.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

N.D.Rajadhyaksha, The Six Systems of Indian Philosophy, P-30