Mimamsa school of thought

Mīmāṃsā, literally “the desire to think,” is a system of ritual and textual interpretation that developed out of the vedic sacrificial and liturgical tradition in the mid- to late 1st millennium BCE and came in time to be one of the most influential intellectual disciplines in premodern India. Mīmāṃsā began as an effort to resolve disputes regarding ritual procedure, and it remained concerned with vedic ritual ( yajña ) throughout its history, but its influence and authority greatly expanded over time, and it remained a key player in Sanskrit intellectual life well into the early modern era, long after the vedic sacrifice itself was marginalized and largely supplanted by other modes of worship.
The key to the thriving of Mīmāṃsā, even as the cultural influence of vedic sacrificial practice waned, lay in its ever-widening importance as a general hermeneutic – both a universal theory and a detailed practical method of textual interpretation. Because Mīmāṃsā took the position that the vedic ritual must be fully described in, and was solely authorized by, the vedic scriptures themselves, their approach to the resolution of disputes regarding ritual procedure was always framed as a system of rules for interpreting texts. In time it was recognized, by both practitioners of Mīmāṃsā and those working outside the discipline, that these rules of interpretation could be just as well applied to nonritual texts. Mīmāṃsā interpretive principles or nyāyas were very widely applied in the interpretation of legal/moral texts ( dharmaśāstra ). They were from the beginning central to the interpretations of the Upaniṣads offered by the adherents of the various branches of Vedānta, many of whom saw their own discipline as an outgrowth of Mīmāṃsā – such that many chose to label their own discipline as “later Mīmāṃsā” (Uttaramīmāṃsā), retrospectively designating Mīmāṃsā itself as “prior Mīmāṃsā” (Pūrvamīmāṃsā). In time, Mīmāṃsā came to exert a sizable influence on the interpretation of literary and other nonscriptural texts as well (see McCrea, 2008). Beginning in the mid- to late first millennium CE, Mīmāṃsā came to be commonly designated as the “science of sentences” (vākyaśāstra) and, together with grammar (the “science of words,” padaśāstra) and logic (the “science of valid knowledge,” pramāṇaśāstra), was generally recognized as the centerpiece of Brahmanical education.

The Origins of Mīmāṃsā

The origins of Mīmāṃsā, like those of many of the oldest theoretical disciplines in India, are lost in obscurity. In the vedic canon itself, as early as the Taittirīyasaṃhitā of the Black Yajurveda (c. 800 BCE?), we find the verb form mīmāṃsate (he/she desires to think) used to describe the activity of Brahmans engaged in debating questions of ritual performance (Ramaswami Sastri, 1936, 2–4; Verpoorten, 1987, 1). The term recurs with some frequency in the later vedic canon, including the Upaniṣads. It is clear from this that “mīmāṃsā,” as more or less informal practice of debate among ritual performers, had a long existence prior to its textual codification.
The earliest extant Mīmāṃsā text is the Mīmāṃsāsūtra (c. 200 BCE?), ascribed to Jaimini. Like most of the early philosophical and ritual Sūtra texts, it is probably not the work of a single author and is most likely a composite text that took shape over an extended period of time. The text quotes the views of several named teachers of Mīmāṃsā (including Jaimini himself, who is invariably, like the others, mentioned in the third person). Many of the same early teachers are also named in the Brahmasūtra (the foundational text of the Vedānta tradition), leading some scholars to conclude that the two Sūtra texts originally formed parts of a single corpus (see Parpola, 1981; 1994). The Mīmāṃsāsūtra corpus seems to have grown up alongside, or perhaps slightly later than, the earlier ritual Sūtra texts, with which it shows some significant parallels (Verpoorten, 1987, 1). It is important to be clear, however, that there was from the very beginning a basic functional difference between these ritual Sūtras and the Mīmāṃsāsūtra. Mīmāṃsā never sought to provide a manual for ritual performance; this was the function of the ritual Sūtra literature, which provided detailed instructions for the performance of large public sacrifices (in the Śrautasūtras) and domestic sacrifices (in the Gṛhyasūtras). Mīmāṃsā, from its earliest available manifestation in the Mīmāṃsāsūtra, seems to have been conceived, by contrast, as a theory of ritual – a way of grounding already established sacrificial procedures in a methodologically consistent reading of the vedic texts meant to authorize them, as well as an analytic rubric that could be applied in resolving unsettled points of performance through a principled reading of these same texts.
The Mīmāṃsāsūtra consists of roughly 2,700 mostly brief and frequently cryptic aphorisms (sūtras). It is traditionally divided into 12 chapters or adhyāyas, each of which is further subdivided into either four or eight subchapters (pādas, lit. feet). Within each pāda the sūtras are further divided into smaller sections, called adhikaraṇas, each devoted to a single problem or topic. The adhyāya divisions at least are probably part of the original design of the Mīmāṃsāsūtra, being sometimes marked verbally, and corresponding as they do to relatively clear topical divisions in the subject matter. The pāda divisions are sometimes similarly marked by significant topical divisions, but at other times appear arbitrary and may well have been adopted later, though they are consistently followed by all Mīmāṃsā texts available to us. The division into adhikaraṇas is presumably a later development, and the precise number and demarcation of the adhikaraṇas is a matter of dispute for some later Mīmāṃsā authors.
While the overall topical structure of the Mīmāṃsāsūtra, as well as some of the basic interpretive principles it develops and the ritual and textual examples it discusses, can be discerned with some confidence, many of the sūtras are so opaque that it is difficult to be sure at many points what exactly is the argument of the Mīmāṃsāsūtra itself, as distinct from its commentaries. Virtually all work in the field since the mid-1st millennium CE, and nearly all modern scholarship on Mīmāṃsā as well, is based more on the oldest available commentary, the Mīmāṃsāsūtrabhāṣya of Śabara (c. 450 CE?), than on the Mīmāṃsāsūtra itself (although some efforts have been made to reconstruct the views of “Jaimini,” as distinct from those of Śabara – most notably, in Clooney, 1990).
It appears that there was a substantial body of Mīmāṃsā literature produced between the time of the Mīmāṃsāsūtra and that of Śabara, but it is known only from a few stray references in later texts, probably themselves based on hearsay in many cases. Upavarṣa, Bodhāyana, and Bhavadāsa are mentioned by later authors as having written commentaries on the Mīmāṃsāsūtra; the first two may have commented on the Vedāntasūtra as well (Ramaswami Sastri, 1936, 14–21; Veerpoorten, 1987, 7–8). Śabara occasionally refers to, and at one point summarizes at length, the views of one vṛttikāra (“the author of the commentary”), who may perhaps be identified with one or another of these three or may be yet another pre-Śabara commentator on the Mīmāṃsāsūtra.
The earliest extant text that gives a clear picture of the entire Mīmāṃsā system, then, is the Mīmāṃsāsūtrabhāṣya of Śabara. Śabara’s work was so successful that it quickly supplanted all earlier commentaries on the Mīmāṃsāsūtra and became the basis for virtually all later work in the field. Śabara’s interpretation of the sūtras, his identification and explanation of the scriptural passages under discussion in each adhikaraṇa, and his vision of the methods, the principles, and the overall structure of Mīmāṃsā as a system of textual analysis form the basis for all subsequent discussion. It is appropriate therefore to set forth here a cursory survey of the Mīmāṃsā system as explained by Śabara.

An Overview of the System

The first chapter or adhyāya of the Mīmāṃsāsūtra is, like most of the others, divided into four subchapters or pādas. The first of these, singled out by later authors as the one of most general philosophical significance, is the tarka (“reasoning”) pāda, which deals most directly with the epistemological bases of the system and sets forth the principal arguments for regarding the Veda alone as a reliable authority on matters beyond ordinary human means of knowledge. The study of Mīmāṃsā is said to be prompted by a desire to know “dharma,” defined as “a desirable thing [artha] indicated by a scriptural command [codanā]” (MīmS. 1.1.2). While dharma is thus stipulatively defined as a good knowable through scripture alone, the text goes on to attempt to demonstrate this through an analysis of nonscriptural modes of knowing, aimed at demonstrating their incapacity in matters of dharma, understood here primarily to mean the desirable results that will ensue from the proper performance of vedic sacrifices and other actions prescribed by the Vedas and Dharmaśāstras. The Mīmāṃsāsūtra mentions only perception as a putative alternate means of knowing dharma and rejects it as such on the grounds that perception is able to apprehend only presently existing objects, while dharma, consisting of the prospective supernatural results of present actions, necessarily lies in the future. Śabara extends the argument to other nonscriptural means of knowledge – inference, analogy, and the like – since these are all, he argues, ultimately dependent on perception and therefore similarly incapable as a source for knowledge of the future results of ritual actions. Language, by contrast, is able to produce awareness of past, present, or future objects and is hence the only possible means for such knowledge. The evidentiary value of human statements is limited by the cognitive capacities of those who make them, and hence they too cannot be regarded as a reliable source of knowledge for supramundane matters. But the statements of the Veda are not limited in this way; they are eternal, not made by any person, and hence they and they alone can be regarded as authoritative on matters beyond the range of human perception.
It is at this point that Śabara introduces a lengthy excerpt or summary of the earlier work of the unnamed vṛttikāra (“author of the commentary”). The basic line of argument is the same as Śabara’s, but the vṛttikāra presents a far more detailed analysis of perception and the other possible means of knowledge, as well as a more far-ranging consideration of the epistemological premises of the argument for vedic authority, and the properties of language that allow it to serve as a means for knowledge of dharma. The vṛttikāra and, following him, virtually all of the later Mīmāṃsakas accept either five or six distinct “means of correct knowledge” (pramāṇas): perception (pratyakṣa), inference or (more accurately) induction (anumāna), language or verbal testimony (śabda), analogy (upamāna), necessary presumption (arthāpatti – a kind of abduction or synthetic a priori reasoning), and (controversially) “absence” (abhāva) as the sixth. The last of these is accepted as a separate means of knowledge by Kumārila and his followers – they believe that it is through the absence, under appropriate circumstances, of any of the modes of evidence for the existence of a thing that one becomes aware of the nonexistence of that thing – but this is rejected by the Prābhākaras (see below).
In defending the view that vedic statements, in the absence of any evidence from other means of knowledge that can counteract them, must be accepted as reliable, the vṛttikāra introduces several crucial and unprecedented claims that lay the groundwork for the extremely influential epistemology later developed by Kumārila in his Ślokavārttika. Meeting the criticism that the efficacy of the rituals enjoined in the Veda cannot be relied on, as it is unverifiable, the vṛttikāra turns the question around on his accuser: the key, according to him, is that vedic injunctions cannot be falsified. He rejects the notion that scriptural knowledge, or any kind of knowledge, can be made to rest on a verification requirement. The most we can do is seek and fail to find ground for falsification. It is only when one awareness is contradicted by another, or when a defect is found in the cause of that awareness, that we can dismiss it as false (Abhyankar, vol. I, 1970, 34). The vṛttikāra’s general falsificationist approach to the question of epistemology, and his two criteria for falsification, would both later be adopted by Kumārila as the cornerstone of his theory of the “intrinsic validity” (svataḥ prāmāṇya) of all cognitions.
The vṛttikāra also analyzes in detail the implications of the Mīmāṃsā claim that the vedic texts are eternal. For this to be the case, language itself (specifically the Sanskrit language) must be eternal. And this can only be so if the words that make up the language, the objects to which these words refer, and the connection between these words and these objects, are all eternal. For this reason, the Mīmāṃsakas insist that the actual referent of words such as “cow” must be the universal class property “cowness,” which is unitary and eternal, rather than any individual cow or cows, as these are multiple and ephemeral.
This same impulse to establish, as an essential prerequisite for the eternality of the Veda itself, the eternity of the components of language is made clear in the sūtras themselves in the next section of the Mīmāṃsāsūtra and Mīmāṃsāsūtrabhāṣya (1.1.6–23), in which arguments are advanced for the eternality of the speech sounds of which the vedic text is composed. It is argued that the sounds that we utter and hear are only the manifestations of the eternally subsistent sounds of the vedic texts. It is clear from the lengthy discussion of this topic in the Mīmāṃsāsūtra, and from early responses to the system, that the eternality of sound was one of the key tenets of Mīmāṃsā during its earlier period. The topic seems to have receded in importance for the post-Śabara Mīmāṃsā tradition, although it remains at least a formal commitment even for later Mīmāṃsakas.
The next adhikaraṇa (1.1.24–26) turns to a more complex topic that is key for the entire discipline – that of the relationship between sentences and their meanings. It is clear, and the Mīmāṃsakas acknowledge, that the relation between sentences and their meanings cannot, like that between words and their meanings, be regarded as eternal. It is possible for one to understand a sentence one has never heard before; hence there cannot be a fixed relation between every sentence and its meaning that one must learn before using or understanding the sentence. Śabara argues that sentence meaning must be understood as a (fixed and predictable) function of word meaning. Hence we are able to understand the meaning of the vedic sentences even without having previously learned their meanings in a one-on-one correspondence. He goes on to explain, though, that the sentences of the Vedas were not composed by anyone and have existed always (1.1.27–32). If the Veda had an author, it is argued, this author would certainly have to be recalled; in the absence of such a recollection, we have no basis for presuming the existence of an author. This we could do only if there were no other possible explanation for the existence of the text. But there is another explanation. There is no reason not to believe that persons in the past learned the Veda just as contemporary people learn it: by hearing it recited by a teacher who himself learned it from a similar teacher in his own youth. This is the only form of vedic transmission of which we have any experience or collective memory, and, in the absence of counterevidence of any kind, we are in no position to presume a break in this chain of transmission at any point in the past. Hence the Veda may legitimately be regarded as eternal, and authoritative on matters of dharma as a human-authored text would not be.
In the first pāda, it has been established that the Veda, and only the Veda, being authorless, can serve as a reliable warrant for knowledge of dharma – that is, the supernatural results that will follow from sacrifices and other prescribed actions; the remaining three pādas of the first adhyāya deal with parts of the Veda that do not appear to be directly injunctive of such actions, and with the authority of actions that are not directly authorized by any known vedic text.
While the Mīmāṃsakas understand the Veda as essentially a manual for ritual performance, there are large portions of the Veda that bear no obvious injunctive force: apparently factual descriptions and claims, as well as narratives of, for example, the gods and their battles. Any narrative content raises serious conceptual problems for the Mīmāṃsā account of the Vedas as eternal. If a vedic passage describes, for example, Indra’s slaying of the demon Vṛtra, it would seem that it could only have been composed after this event took place. Furthermore, many of the apparently factual statements are either obviously false (e.g. “By day, only the smoke of fire is seen, not the flame... By night, only the flame of fire is seen, not the smoke”; see MīmSBh. 1.2.2), or absurd (e.g. “The trees performed a collective sacrifice”; see MīmSBh. 1.1.32). To circumvent this threat to the eternality and accuracy of the Veda, the Mīmāṃsakas adopt a radical hermeneutic strategy. They take the position that all narrative and descriptive passages in the Veda – which they term arthavādas, “factual descriptions” – must be understood figuratively: such passages cannot be taken to literally mean what they say at all, but must be read as figuratively praising or blaming actual or potential elements of ritual actions (such as the fire and Indra), solely in order to encourage or discourage their ritual use.
The other major variety of noninjunctive vedic passage that the Mīmāṃsakas must deal with is the ritual formula or mantra (1.2.31–53). These are parts of the Veda that do not prescribe any action for the hearer, but actually form part of the actions enjoined in other sentences: they are verse or prose passages that must actually be recited as part of the sacrificial ritual. The Mīmāṃsakas argue that, though not injunctive, these passages do perform an important function. They are not magical formulas that have ritual efficacy simply by being pronounced, but serve a perceptible purpose: they serve to remind the performers of the actions they are to perform at certain points in the ritual. The Mīmāṃsakas make it a general principle that one should ascribe a perceptible purpose to ritual elements whenever it is possible to do so. When no such purpose can be found, one must perforce postulate an “unseen” (adṛṣṭa) force as its result; but on grounds of economy of hypothesis (kalpanālāghava), one should interpret the vedic texts in such a way as to minimize the need for such postulation.
The third pāda presents something of a detour from the general focus on the putatively authorless vedic scriptures, as it is concerned with the reliability of human-authored texts, and of unwritten but socially established customs, as guides in matters of dharma. Such alternate sources of knowledge of dharma pose conceptual problems for the Mīmāṃsakas, as they would appear to violate their general insistence that only authorless and impersonal texts can be regarded as reliable sources on supersensory matters. The way out of this dilemma is to insist that, even in the case of human-authored texts on dharma (e.g., most famously, the Manusmṛti by Manu), it is really the Veda and only the Veda that authorizes the claims they contain. We may trust the claims of Manu, an upholder of vedic authority, because we may legitimately infer that his claims regarding dharma are derived from vedic texts currently unavailable to us (in contrast to other authors of purported scriptures, such as the Buddha, who deny vedic authority and cannot be inferred to have relied on vedic texts in composing their own works). Works presumed to be derived in this way from inaccessible vedic sources are hence known as “remembered” texts (Smṛti), as distinct from “heard” texts (Śruti), that is, accessible vedic texts that we can still actually hear being recited. The rationale for the authority of unwritten custom is essentially the same as that for Smṛti texts: we may infer that practices common among upholders and reciters of the Veda are in fact based on some vedic source text, even if that text is not currently available to us. Thus the authority of both textually encoded and unwritten Brahmanical practices is upheld, while still maintaining in principle that all knowledge regarding dharma must derive from authorless Śruti texts.
Once the authority of sentences, both injunctive and (apparently) descriptive, occurring in both vedic (Śruti) and human-authored (Smṛti) texts has been dealt with, the next topic of discussion is the authority of individual words occurring in the vedic texts. There are certain words occurring in the Veda that seem to serve no clear injunctive role, for example obscure words such as “udbhid” in the injunction “One should sacrifice with udbhid” (MīmS. 1.4.1–2). In interpreting this sentence, should one assume “udbhid” to be some sort of offering material and guess at the meaning of this otherwise unknown term on the basis of its etymology, or should one assume that “udbhid” is the name of the sacrifice to be performed? The conclusion they arrive at is that this and similar terms should be taken as names of sacrifices. Against the objection that the mere designation of a sacrifice by a name serves no injunctive purpose – it prescribes nothing and therefore adds nothing to the ritual performance – the Mīmāṃsakas contend that names do serve a necessary referential function within the textual corpus of the Veda. It is through the use of sacrificial names that links can be made between sentences enjoining the performance of a particular sacrifice and other sentences (sometimes widely dispersed throughout the various vedic texts) that prescribe the offering of materials, divinities, mantras, and other necessary elements of the sacrifice in question.
As part of the argument against interpreting terms such as udbhid as indicating a particular offering material, an important objection is raised against allowing a single sentence, such as “One should sacrifice with udbhid,” to enjoin both a sacrifice and an offering material. To do so, it is argued, would constitute a “breaking of the sentence” or vākyabheda – forcing one and the same sentence to perform two distinct functions. The concept of vākyabheda, the seminal discussion of which is undertaken in Śabara’s comments on the Mīmāṃsāsūtra (1.4.6–8), becomes one of the most important tools in the Mīmāṃsakas’ interpretive arsenal, but also a source of considerable debate and confusion, as it comes to be seen as a complex problem to determine just what constitutes a single, unitary semantic role for a sentence – what kind of unity is required for a sentence’s interpretation to be considered coherent, and what degree and kind of internal complexity may be tolerated in the construal of a sentence without violating the stricture against vākyabheda?
The discussion of sacrificial names leads into a broader discussion of the semantics of individual words, and there are seminal and influential discussions of how and when terms should be understood to bear etymologically derived (yaugika) or etymologically nondeducible (rūḍha) meanings (MīmS. 1.4.10–12), of the conditions under which secondary or metaphorical meanings may be adopted (MīmS. 1.4.23), and of the use of context (MīmS. 1.4.24) or implication (MīmS. 1.4.25) to deduce the meaning of ambiguous terms.
The programmatic topic of the second chapter of the Mīmāṃsāsūtra is the division of actions – how can one determine whether a particular vedic passage describes part of a ritual already mentioned elsewhere, or prescribes an altogether new action? But, as a preliminary to this, certain general features of action, and of linguistic structures describing action (which come to exercise a powerful pan-Indian influence on the treatment of these topics), are introduced. To begin with, it is established that the primary element in any sentence, and the element of vedic language that directly conveys dharma, is the (expressed or implied) verb, rather than the nouns or adjectives. The latter refer to elements (substances, qualities, etc.) that are already “established” (siddha), while dharma, as the future result of the ritual actions described in the Vedas, is still “to be established” (sādhya). It is verbs rather than nouns that indicate the event or thing “to be established” in any sentence (what later Mīmāṃsakas, beginning with Kumārila, refer to as bhāvanā or “bringing into being” – see Kataoka, 2001; McCrea, 2000, 434–436); nominal elements can be meaningfully construed in sentences insofar as they contribute in some way to this event, and in this sense they must be regarded as subordinate to it.
Having established the linguistic centrality of verbs, the Mīmāṃsakas next (MīmS. 2.1.5) turn to examine more closely the nature of specifically ritual actions. How can actions performed in the present produce dharmic results at some unspecified future time? Rejecting the possibility that actions can directly create effects remote in time, the Mīmāṃsakas argue that to explain the effectiveness of ritual actions, we must postulate an unseen potency, a “new thing” (apūrva), as an intermediary force that is created by the performance of the ritual and continues to exist unperceived until it produces the specified result for the sacrificer. Some actions are “primary” (pradhāna), performed in order to directly produce such a transcendent result, while others are “secondary” (guṇa), performed for some perceptible purpose, such as the preparation of the necessary offering material.
After this general consideration of the nature of actions, six criteria are set forth for the differentiation of the actions mentioned in the Veda from one another. Actions mentioned by different verbs, or by repetitions of the same verb, are ordinarily taken to be distinct, though there are of course exceptions, and much effort is given to determining when one is able to recognize that an action mentioned in one sentence is the same as that mentioned in another. Sometimes when a sacrifice and an offering material or deity are mentioned in the same sentence, it must be understood as a “qualified injunction,” enjoining an action along with its subordinate elements; at other times one must take the mentioned sacrifice to be a “reiteration” (anuvāda) of an already enjoined sacrifice, made in order to enjoin a subordinate element in connection with it. Both the internal coherence of the sentence and its place in its larger discursive context must be considered in arriving at these judgments. Sacrifices can also be differentiated by the use of distinct offering materials, by proper names, by enumeration, or by occurrence in different contexts.
The third adhyāya deals with the determination of relations of subordination and superordination among elements of the ritual. Here again six criteria are set forth for determining such relations: direct statement, implication, syntactic connection, context, sequential position, and proper names. But these factors, unlike those used for differentiating actions, can give conflicting indications, and the Mīmāṃsakas consequently rank them hierarchically, in the order stated; each stated means is taken to be more directly indicative of a subordination than the one that follows it in the list, and therefore more authoritative in determining such relations (MīmS. 3.3.14).
Again, much attention is devoted to the question of sentential unity, and the extent to which multiple elements and multiple relations of subordination may be conveyed by a single sentence without incurring the fault of vākyabheda. It is argued that multiple elements may be simultaneously enjoined, through the process of “qualified injunction” referred to above, only if they form part of a single hierarchically integrated structure. For example (MīmS. 6.1.12), the injunction “One purchases the soma with a red, pink-eyed, one-year-old [cow]” can enjoin the purchase of the soma, as qualified by a substance (the cow) and a quality (the cow’s red color), because the substance and quality are subordinate to the act of purchase, and all three are enjoined in this sentence. In the seemingly parallel example “One wipes the spoon with a woolen strainer” (MīmS. 6.1.13–15), the act of wiping and the oneness of the spoon (indicated by the singular number) cannot both be enjoined by this single expression; the spoon(s) have already been enjoined by another sentence, and are mentioned here only as a “reiteration,” for the purposes of enjoining the subordinate act of wiping in connection with them. If the quality of oneness were also enjoined in connection with the spoon(s), we would have two separate injunctive predicates, and the sentence would be split, hence the oneness must be disregarded, and all spoons used in the rite must be wiped (see McCrea, 2000, 442–448).
Adhyāya four investigates the factors that motivate various sacrifical elements. Of any given element, one must consider whether it is introduced “for the sake of the person” (puruṣārtha) or “for the sake of the ritual” (kratvartha). The distinction can have important interpretive consequences. For example, statements mentioning particular results as arising from the use of particular ritual elements can be understood literally only if those elements are “for the sake of the person.” Results mentioned in connection with substances or preparatory actions, which are always “for the sake of the sacrifice” (such as “He whose offering-spoon is made of parṇa-wood hears no ill report of himself”), must be understood as arthavādas, and therefore such results cannot be expected to actually occur; their purpose is only to eulogize certain elements of the sacrifice (MīmS. 4.3.1).
The fifth adhyāya details means for determining the proper sequence of operations during a sacrificial performance. Here again, as in adhyāya three, the Mīmāṃsakas set forth a list of six means of determination (pramāṇas), ranked according to their degree of explicitness: a direct statement (śruti) of sequence is the most authoritative, a necessary implication (artha, e.g. that one must finish preparing the offering material before one offers it) comes next, then the order in which the enjoining texts are recited (pāṭha), and so on.
Adhyāya six deals with matters related to the qualifications of the sacrificer. Who is it that can perform a given sacrifice, and under what conditions? In the prototypical sacrificial injunction, “One who desires heaven should sacrifice” (svargakāmo yajeta), the specified condition for eligibility is desire for the specified result. From this we may legitimately conclude that “heaven” (for the sacrificer) will result from the perfor-mance of the rite in question (MīmS. 6.1.1–3). But not anybody who possesses this desire can perform the sacrifice; further criteria are elaborated for eligibility to perform specific sacrifices, some explicitly stated in the Vedas, some implied. Both animals and divinities are excluded from performance; only humans may sacrifice (MīmS. 6.1.4–5). Social restrictions apply as well: Śūdras, for example, are not ritually permitted to set up sacrificial fires – a necessary prerequisite for nearly all sacrifices – and are generally thereby excluded from performing sacrifices (MīmS. 6.1.25–38). There are, however, certain sacrifices, including the laying down of sacrificial fires, that are specifically enjoined for members of certain low-caste groups, and, for these particular rituals, members of these groups must be considered eligible (MīmS. 6.1.44–52).
Much attention is also given to the distinction between desire-based and obligatory sacrifices. Sacrifices are ordinarily undertaken out of the desire to obtain a particular result, but there are some sacrifices that, performed once, one must perform regularly throughout one’s life on regular occasions. Failure to perform sacrifices that have become obligatory in this way will not simply lead to the absence of the desired result, but will result in a karmic penalty for the negligent sacrificer. What then is one to do if one is unable to perform a required sacrifice (due to the absence of the requisite offering materials, for instance)? A purely desire-based sacrifice may not be performed without the requisite materials, but one should perform an obligatory rite even without them, in accordance with one’s ability. When performing an obligatory rite without the proper substances, one may substitute the nearest available approximation; the rite will not produce its stipulated result, but no karmic penalty will obtain.
Adhyāyas seven to ten of the Mīmāṃsāsūtra are concerned with the transference of details (atideśa) from one ritual to another, and with various attendant problems. Many of the sacrifices prescribed in the Veda are only incompletely described, and to fill in the gaps, the Mīmāṃsakas resort to the technique of atideśa, treating some sacrifices as archetypal models from which one may derive the unspecified performance details of the incompletely described sacrifices. Adhyāya seven deals with transference in general (which sacrifices serve as the models for which others?) while adhyāya eight deals with the specifics (once the general archetype/ectype relation between two sacrifices has been established, exactly which details are to be transferred?). Adhyāya nine considers the necessary modification (ūha) of performance elements transferred from an archetypal to an extypal rite: for example, when mantras naming the divinity who receives the offering are transferred to a rite whose offering is dedicated to a different divinity, the mantra must be changed to reflect this. Incidentally, the nature of the divinities themselves is investigated (MīmS. 9.1.6–10). It is concluded that these have no active role in the sacrifice at all. They neither consume the sacrificial offerings nor play any role in the production of the result for the sacrificer. They serve only as the nominal dedicatees of the ritual offerings; it is the sacrifice itself that, via the causal mediacy of the apūrva, produces the sacrificial result. Adhyāya ten deals with the blocking (bādha) of one detail by another in cases of transference: when performance details (mantras, offering materials, preparatory actions, etc.) are transferred from an archetypal to an ectypal rite, but there are already similar or parallel performance details directly enjoined in connection with the ectypal rite, do these directly enjoined details block or preclude the transference of the new details, or are they to be performed in combination (samuccaya) with the transferred details?
The final two adhyāyas of the Mīṃāṃsāsūtra deal with two different modes of joint or dual functioning between sacrificial elements, whether they are derived from direct injunctions or from transference. Adhyāya eleven deals with the process known as tantra (“systematization”) under which one element may equally subserve two or more purposes (as the laying down of the three sacrificial fires functions equally to enable all the sacrifices that will later be performed using those fires), or under which multiple elements may equally serve a single purpose (as the six new- and full-moon sacrifices collectively produce heaven as a result for their performer). The 12th and final adhyāya deals with the related but distinct process of prasaṅga (incidental connection), in which an element introduced to accomplish one purpose secondarily and incidentally accomplishes a second purpose.

Kumārila, Prabhākara, and Their Schools

The 7th century marks the beginning of an especially contentious and productive period in the history of Mīmāṃsā. It saw the rise of two important commentators and consolidators of Śabara’s work, Kumārilabhaṭṭa and Prabhākara, and, in the wake of their work, a division of the field into two subschools, generally known as Bhāṭṭa and Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā, constituted by the followers of each of these commentators, that would mark the field throughout the rest of its history.
Kumārila and Prabhākara were very near contemporaries, but it is most likely that Kumārila was at least slightly the senior of the two. His three surviving works, taken together, constitute a commentary on the whole of Śabara’s Mīmāṃsāsūtrabhāṣya: the Ślokavārttika (Critique in Verse) comments on the first pāda of the first adhyāya (the tarka or “reasoning” pāda); the Tantravārttika (Critique of the System), on the remaining pādas of the first adhyāya, and on adhyāyas two and three; the Ṭupṭīkā (Commentary in Notes) is a brief and fragmentary commentary on adhyāyas 4 to 12. The designation of the first two works as Critiques or Vārttikas is significant. The title implies that these are not simply exegeses or amplifications of what is implied in the works they comment on, but actually adopt a principled critical attitude toward their source material. And this implication is in fact borne out by Kumārila’s practice. While his overall understanding of the Mīmāṃsā system follows very closely that of Śabara, he is selectively willing to find fault with both his arguments and conclusions (in stark contrast to his near-contemporary and rival Prabhākara, who, even when he seems to depart radically from Śabara’s position, always at least maintains the fiction that he is simply interpreting the views of the latter).
Of Kumārila’s three surviving works, it was the Ślokavārttika that exercised the greatest influence and attracted the most attention in philosophical circles. Kumārila, through his reformulation of Mīmāṃsā epistemology and his thorough and intense critiques of all rival systems of epistemology known to him, became one of the most well-known and talked-about Indian philosophers. He was closely studied by the many who opposed him, as well as by those who supported and borrowed from him. The centerpiece of Kumārila’s epistemology, and the doctrine most characteristically associated with Mīmāṃsā after his time, was his theory of the “intrinsic validity” (svataḥ prāmāṇya) of all cognitions (see Taber, 1992). Building on arguments first made by the vṛttikāra quoted by Śabara (see above), Kumārila, in order to uphold the case for the authority of the authorless Vedas, advances the claim that not only the awareness arising from vedic statements, or language in general, but also all awareness whatsoever must be regarded as true unless and until grounds for its falsification appear. If it were held that our acceptance of any awareness as true depends on its verification, either through confirmation by additional supporting awareness, or by an investigation of its cause, Kumārila’s claim is that an infinite regress would result: to certify that any given awareness is true, we would need to confirm it through another awareness, but this second awareness would need to be confirmed by a third, the third by a fourth, and so on. Hence it follows that a confirmation requirement would make it impossible ever to accept any awareness as valid. However, if we accept all unfalsified awareness as true and decertify only that for which specific grounds for falsification appear, we can satisfactorily account for our ordinary epistemic behavior and equip ourselves with a workable standard for negotiating philosophical and scriptural truth claims. Following the lead of the vṛttikāra, Kumārila argues that there are two and only two conditions that should lead us to dismiss any awareness as false: its direct sublation by a subsequent and contrary awareness (as when we look closely at what at first appeared to be a piece of silver and discover that it is only a shiny bit of shell), or the discovery of some defect in the causal mechanism that produced the awareness (as when one sees an ordinarily white object as yellow, but then discovers that one is suffering from an ocular disease that distorts one’s color perception).
Having established this set of general epistemological principles, Kumārila is well positioned to make the case for the authority of the vedic scriptures against their principle rivals, those of the Buddhists and the Jainas. Both of these groups ground the authority of their scriptures on their presumed authors, namely the Buddha and the Jina, the founders of these two faith traditions. But belief in the validity of these scriptures is undermined by the second of Kumārila’s falsification criteria: even if the claims of the Buddha and the Jina about supernatural matters cannot be empirically falsified, the very fact that these claims are made by human beings undermines their validity. We know that humans like ourselves are prone to both error and deliberate falsehood, and that humans like ourselves have no capacity to directly perceive supernatural matters; hence we can put no faith in claims about the supernatural made by human authors, as their source is flawed. But this falsification criterion does not apply to the Vedas, which, it is argued, are eternal and not the product of any author, either human or divine. Being eternal, the Vedas have no cause and hence cannot, like the Buddhist and Jaina scriptures, be invalidated by the evident deficiency of their cause.
Both the general theory of intrinsic validity and the specific grounding of the Vedas’ authority in their not being produced by any person (apauruṣeyatva) come to be extraordinarily influential. Not all defenders of the Veda accept them – some, most notably the followers of Nyāya logic, argue that the Vedas are created by an all-knowing God and hold them valid on this ground – but followers of virtually all schools of Vedānta, which has come to occupy a more and more central position in the interpretation and philosophical defense of the Veda over the past millennium, accept both intrinsic validity and the eternality of the Vedas as the bases of their scriptural epistemology.
Other noteworthy features of the Ślokavārttika include its scorching polemics against Buddhist philosophers, particularly the 6th-century Buddhist epistemologist Dignāga. Buddhist critiques were addressed occasionally by Śabara and somewhat more fully by the vṛttikāra, but all this pales before Kumārila, whose sustained and point-by-point analysis of almost every aspect of Buddhist theories of knowledge, perception, inference, and scripture dwarfs anything that has come before (see e.g. Taber, 2005).
Along with this intense polemical focus on the Buddhist threat, Kumārila also has much criticism to offer against rival theorists within the Hindu fold. He is particularly ruthless in uprooting notions popular among supposed upholders of the vedic tradition that might undermine the case for the eternality and, therefore, the authority of the Vedas. For example, he argues at great length against the possibility of the periodic dissolution and reemergence of the cosmos, and against the possibility of any kind of creator-god playing any role in the creation, manifestation, or arrangement of the universe, as postulated by many puranic and other Hindu cosmologies. Both an active creator-god, and the periodic dissolution and reemergence of the cosmos, would threaten the claim that the Vedas are truly eternal. If they are reuttered or remanifested by God after each dissolution, then he would be their speaker, and, for any hearers, his reliability would be as open to question as that of any other speaker (see McCrea, 2009). On Kumārila’s understanding, vedic authority can only rest on a beginningless and unbroken chain of human, Brahman teachers, each of whom learned the text in an entirely ordinary and nonsupernatural manner, from another ordinary human teacher earlier in his own life. Hence this world, humans, Brahmans, and the Sanskrit language must all likewise be eternal if vedic authority is to be recognized.
Despite the widespread attention the Ślokavārttika attracted from rival epistemologists, Kumārila’s magnum opus, and the work that probably exercised the greatest influence on Indian intellectual culture in the long run, was the second part of his commentary on Śabara’s Mīmāṃsāsūtrabhāṣya, the Tantravārttika. Kumārila deepens the analysis of the typology and structure of injunctions, and of the related issues of sentential split and “qualified injunction,” providing a set of interpretive tools useful for almost everybody seriously concerned with textual analysis and interpretation. In his most focused discussion of sentential split (TVā. 1.4.6–8), for example, he analyzes “injunction” itself into three distinct components: “predication” (vidhi), “appropriation” (upādāna – the impulse to obtain or employ something), and “primacy” (prādhānya). Each of the three is examined in combination with its complementary and opposite quality: “reiteration” (anuvāda), “reference” (uddeśa), and subordination (guṇatva), respectively. The three injunctive aspects coincide in most injunctions, but there are exceptions. Some elements, such as time and place, can be predicated, but can never be appropriated: one can be told to perform an act at a certain time or place, but one cannot do anything to the time or place.
Through these contrasting triads of properties, Kumārila develops a clear method for arriving at the precise determination of what he (following Śabara) calls the vacanavyakti or “sentence particular” for each expression in the Veda: the specification, in the light of its textual and ritual context, of exactly which of its elements are “predicated,” “appropriated,” and so on (see McCrea 2000, 441–442, 449–451). Through Kumārila’s work, this context-driven specification of the function of language components becomes the most fundamental technique of discourse analysis for the Mīmāṃsakas and, ultimately, for practitioners of most disciplines of textual analysis in India.
Prabhākara wrote two full commentaries on Śabara’s Mīmāṃsāsūtrabhāṣya, called the Nibandhana (Full Treatise) and the Vivaraṇa (Gloss), but more commonly referred to, by both followers of the system and outsiders, as the “great” and “little” commentaries (Bṛhatī and Laghvī, respectively). The first of these survives only in part (it breaks off in adhyāya six), while the second is altogether lost (although Śālikanāthamiśra’s commentary on the last six chapters survives). Prabhākara’s general project is in some ways more conservative but in others more radical than Kumārila’s. He too is very concerned to confront the challenge of Buddhism, and of Dignāga’s Buddhist epistemology in particular. But whereas Kumārila challenged the Buddhist epistemologists on nearly every point, Prabhākara actually incorporates certain elements of the Buddhists’ theory into his own, arguing for instance that all cognitions are “self-apparent” (svayaṃprakāśa) – that is, that to be aware of something is to know that one is aware of it – in contrast to Kumārila, the vṛttikāra, and (apparently) Śabara, who hold that awareness bears only on its own object and can itself only be known by a second-order inferential awareness (i.e. one infers from the fact that an object is seen that a perceptual event has taken place). Prabhākara’s accession to the Buddhist position on this and other matters is sufficiently marked in that he is sometimes referred to disparagingly by later Hindu philosophers as a “friend of the Buddhists” (bauddhabandhu; see Stcherbatsky, vol. I, 1962, 52).
Prabhākara’s most distinctive contribution to epistemology lies in his distinctive and wholly original account of error – the so-called nonappearance (akhyāti) theory. Prabhākara adopts a version of the intrinsic-validity theory first explicitly formulated by Kumārila; but whereas for Kumārila all awareness contents must be accepted as true unless and until falsified by subsequent awareness, Prabhākara takes the far more radical position that no awareness content of any sort is ever falsified. Everything that forms part of our awareness at any time is necessarily real. What we call “error” is the result not of any false or unreal object appearing in our awareness, but is simply an absence – the “nonappearance” of some object or bit of information relevant to our interests. For example, when we see a shiny bit of shell and think “This is silver,” our awareness has two components: the “this,” which accurately grasps the object before our eyes, and “silver,” which accurately grasps real silver that we remember from previous experiences. When we look more closely and identify the “this” as shell, we attain an additional awareness – of the distinction between the perceived object and the remembered silver – but neither of the components of our original awareness are overturned thereby.
Prabhākara’s Mīmāṃsā departs most plainly from Śabara’s and Kumārila’s in his understanding of the sacrificer’s motivation. Śabara and Kumārila take all human motivation to be straightforwardly self-interested, and they analyze injunctions such as “One who desires heaven should sacrifice” accordingly. Even though the term “heaven” occurs here in a grammatically subordinate position, they argue that it must be understood as the primary object to be attained by the sacrifice, and the factor that motivates the potential performer. Prabhākara, by contrast, argues that the performer can only recognize that heaven will result from his performance of the sacrifice after he has recognized that its performance is incumbent upon him – that he is “the one enjoined” (niyojya). Hence, although the sacrifice will produce its stipulated result, it cannot be this that initially motivates the performer. He must instead be motivated by a sheer sense of the “obligatoriness” (kāryatva) of the act inquestion (see Yoshimizu, 1997).
The same tendency to deemphasize rational self-interest in favor of conditioned response as a factor in human motivation extends to Prabhākara’s treatment of other topics as well. For example, Prabhākara contends that the initial impetus to undertake vedic study comes not from the injunction to the potential student that “One should memorize one’s own branch of the Veda” (svādhyāyo ‘dhyetavyaḥ), but from the injunction commanding the teacher to instruct (adhyāpanavidhi): “One should initiate a brahmin when he is eight years old, one should teach him the Veda” (aṣṭavarṣaṃ brāhmaṇam upanayīta tam adhyāpayīta). It is the teacher, who already knows and understands the meaning of the scrip-tures, who is motivated by injunction to initiate the student’s vedic study. The student, who does not yet understand the Veda’s commands, cannot be motivated by them and must be driven by conditioned obedience or fear of coercion; only later, when he has memorized and learned to understand the vedic text, can he understand it as something that ultimately promotes his own best interests.
There is a third Mīmāṃsaka of roughly this period who merits separate mention. Maṇḍanamiśra (c. 700 CE) knew the works of both Kumārila and Prabhākara and must therefore be at least slightly junior to both. He was very much an iconoclast and cannot really be considered a follower of either (though he leans more toward Kumārila, and his attacks on Prabhākara are more extensive and vituperative). Maṇḍanamiśra wrote in several fields, but three of his six surviving works are on Mīmāṃsā, and several of the others display a strongly Mīmāṃsā bent. One of these, the Mīmāṃsānukramaṇikā (Index to Mīmāṃsā) is a very brief summary in verse of the problem and conclusion of each adhikaraṇa in the Mīmāṃsā system, presumably for mnemonic purposes. His more substantive contributions come mainly in the form of two monograph-like texts (prakaraṇas) on key Mīmāṃsā concepts: Bhāvanāviveka (Analysis of Bringing into Being), on the key notion of effective verbal meaning, and Vidhiviveka (Analysis of Injunction), on the nature of commands (vedic and otherwise), and on how and why it is that hearers are induced to obey them. Like Śabara and Kumārila before him, he understands human motivation to be firmly grounded in self-interest, and he concludes that the basis for our obedience of injunctions is our recognition that the actions they recommend serve as a means to some desired end (iṣṭasādhana).
The four centuries after Kumārila, Prabhākara, and Maṇḍanamiśra were among the most active in the history of the field. All three of these authors quickly became major players on the Indian philosophical scene, and much of the important work in the field during this period took the form of commentaries on their works. Of the three, Kumārila seems to have been the most influential, as well as the most often commented on. There were commentaries on the Ślokavārttika produced by Umbeka (8th cent.), Sucaritamiśra (10th cent.?), and Pārthasārathimiśra (11th cent.), who also wrote an extensive commentary on Kumārila’s Ṭupṭīkā. The earliest commentary on the Tantravārttika, the Ajitā of Paritoṣamiśra, was also composed during this period.
For Prabhākara only a single commentator’s work survives, that of Śālikanāthamiśra (9th cent.?), who appears to have played a major role in promoting Prabhākara’s views and responding to the extensive criticisms already raised against them by his time. In addition to writing full subcommentaries on both of Prabhākara’s commentaries on Śabara, Śālikanāthamiśra wrote a series of shorter topical treatises on aspects of Prabhākara’s theories, collected and circulated under the title Prakaraṇapañcikā. Some of the works contained in this collection deal with specifically ritual matters, others with general epistemology, and some with language or interpretive theory. Perhaps the most notable is the Vākyārthamātṛkā (Fundamentals of Sentence Meaning), an extended defense of Prabhākara’s theory of syntax, and his closely related understanding of the way injunctive sentences come to bear motivating force for their hearers.
Important contributions to Mīmāṃsā were made by the 10th-century polymath Vācaspatimiśra, who wrote extensively on Nyāya, Vedānta, Yoga, and Sāṃkyha as well. His principal Mīmāṃsā works are a commentary on Maṇḍanamiśra’s Vidhiviveka and the Tattvabindu, an independent treatise devoted to upholding Kumārila’s theory of sentence meaning (and devoting particular attention to demolishing the views of Śālikanāthamiśra, among others).

The Age of the Digests

During roughly the first half of the 2nd millennium CE, Mīmāṃsā literature seems to have undergone a significant transformation, as direct commentary on the seminal works of Śabara, Kumārila, and Prabhākara receded as the primary mode of writing in the field. There seems to have been a drive to produce more compact, accessible, and user-friendly works: both works summarizing in order the topics and conclusions of the adhikaraṇas of the Mīmāṃsāsūtra, and more synthetic works that set out to catalogue the basic epistemological and ontological tenets of the system.
The most important works of the first type are the Śāstradīpikā of Pārthasārathimiśra, the Mīmāṃsānayaviveka of Bhavanātha, the Tautā-titamatatilaka of Bhavadeva, and the Jaimīyanyāyamālā of Mādhava. The first three were all produced sometime in the 11th century; Mādhava was active at the court of Harihara and Bukkadevarāya of Vijayanagara (early 14th cent.). It seems noteworthy that several of these authors (Mādhava, Bhavadeva) received royal patronage for their work (something not true, as far as we know, for any of the earlier Mīmāṃsā authors). Coinciding with the shift in the dominant discursive mode of Mīmāṃsā, it would seem to suggest that this shift is driven to some degree by a shift in the audience for Mīmāṃsā works. If they are expected to be read by kings and courtiers, rather than simply by philosophers and ritual specialists, this may in part account for their apparent drive for greater accessibility.
Pārthasārathi’s Śāstradīpikā and Bhavanātha’s Mīmāṃsānayaviveka both proved to be extremely influential, the former summarizing the positions of the Bhāṭṭa school, and the latter those of the Prābhākaras. Both works attracted multiple commentaries in the ensuing centuries and achieved something close to canonical status among followers in their respective schools. It seems that, for many pedagogical purposes, these digests came to a certain extent to actually displace the foundational works of Kumārila and Prabhākara.
Epistemological/ontological summaries were likewise produced by both Bhāṭṭa and Prabhā-kara authors. The most important such work in the Bhāṭṭa school was the (14th cent.?) Nītitattvāvirbhāva of Cidānanda. This text is organized into topical discussions called vādas, probably in imitation of the influential Tattvacintāmaṇi of the Nyāya author Gaṅgeśa, which had been written not long before it. Several comparable topical compendia were produced in the Prābhākara school: the (13th cent.?) Prabhākaravijaya of Nandīśvara, and the (14th cent.) Nayatattvasaṅgraha of Viṣṇubhaṭṭa (Mishra, 1942, 44–45). These works, in addition to offering a highly condensed treatment of Mīmāṃsā principles, are notable for their focus on questions of general philosophical importance, and their comparative lack of interest in the ritual and hermeneutic matters that were the predominant concern of most of the earlier work in the field. This suggests an effort to reposition Mīmāṃsā as a more effective competitor with rival philosophical traditions, in particular with Nyāya logic and epistemology and with Vedānta, both of which seem to have been rising considerably in prominence and influence during this period.

**The Scholastic Turn and the “New Mīmāṃsā”**

The 16th century witnessed yet another striking shift in Mīmāṃsā discursive and intellectual practices. A newly heightened scholasticism, including a large-scale return to the writing of commentaries on the seminal works of the field, was combined with an intense examination of the historical development of positions within the field, culminating in a mode of scholasticism that reached beyond mere exegesis toward a critical perspective on the history of Mīmāṃsā itself – a criticism that at times extended even to the most revered texts in the tradition.
Perhaps the seminal figure in this critical/historical turn in Mīmāṃsā was the celebrated 16th-century South Indian polymath Appayya Dīkṣita, who stimulated similar changes in other fields as well, most notably poetics and Vedānta. Appayya’s most important work on Mīmāṃsā is his Vidhirasāyana (Elixir for Injunctions), in which he raises multiple objections against Kumārila’s typology of vedic injunctions and ultimately completely revises it (see McCrea, 2008). The book generated tremendous controversy – at least six book-length critiques were produced in the following two centuries, as well as extended critiques of Appayya’s injunctive theory in most of the major Mīmāṃsā treatises of the same period, as well as several works written in defense of the Vidhiraṣāyana. Appayya’s willingness to bring such sharp criticism to bear on the founding figure of the Mīmāṃsā tradition in which he was writing obviously provoked a harsh response, but the critical mode of scholarship he pioneered did catch on, and many of the most influential Mīmāṃsakas of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries did practice at least selective criticism of noted authorities on the field. Some, like Appayya’s first major critic, the great Varanasi-based Mīmāṃsā and dharma scholar Śaṅkarabhaṭṭa, confined this criticism to comparatively recent figures in the field, leaving the founders of his tradition, Śabara and Kumārila, as sacrosanct, while others, most notably the 17th-century scholar Khaṇḍadeva, celebrated as the founder of the “New Mīmāṃsā,” push this critical propensity even further and are even willing on occasion to criticize and revise the foundational positions of the field. Indeed, Khaṇḍadeva’s “New Mīmāṃsā” represents little more than the systematic application of the historical critical mode already pioneered by Appayya Dīkṣita and Śaṅkarabhaṭṭa.
In the post-17th-century era, Mīmāṃsā seems fairly quickly to have lost most of its independent constituency, and to have functioned increasingly as a philosophically and hermeneutically useful appendage to other disciplines centrally concerned with the defense and interpretation of Śruti or Smṛti texts – most notably Vedānta and Dharmaśāstra. Practitioners of these disciplines needed to retain a clear understanding of Mīmāṃsā principles, and new commentaries and introductory works on the system continued to be produced for some time, but few if any scholars looked to Mīmāṃsā for their primary intellectual affiliation or identity.

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