Jaimini
What is right can be known only from the commands of the Veda, which has no author and has always existed.
Placement
Author of the Mimamsa Sutra, the founding text of ritual hermeneutics: dharma is known only through Vedic injunction, and the Veda is eternal and authorless.
Key ideas
- Dharma known through injunction
- Eternity of the Veda and of words
- Rules of textual interpretation
Influence
Influenced 1
Kumarila Bhatta
influenced
Kumarila’s Shlokavarttika comments in verse on Shabara’s commentary on Jaimini’s Mimamsa-sutra and defends its doctrine that the Veda is authorless and valid in itself. Kumarila, Slokavarttika; J. Taber, A Hindu Critique of Buddhist Epistemology (2005)
Evidence: AI draft
Kumarila Bhatta › c. 590–650
Works
- c. 200 BCEMimamsa Sutra
Twelve books of rules for interpreting the Vedic injunctions: dharma is what the Veda commands.
Position
Mimamsa (“investigation”) begins with the words “Now, therefore, the inquiry into dharma.” Dharma – right ritual and duty – cannot be known by perception or reasoning, only through the injunctions of the Veda. The Veda has no author, human or divine, and the bond between word and meaning is eternal; so it cannot be distorted by an author’s ignorance or deceit. A ritual brings about its distant fruit through an unseen potency (apurva). The sutra lays down rules of interpretation: how to tell principal from subsidiary acts and injunction from praise, and how to resolve contradictions. These rules shaped Indian law and Vedanta; Shabara and later Kumarila Bhatta continued the school.
Life & context
Jaimini is the traditional author of the Mimamsa Sutra; legend makes him a pupil of Vyasa, the mythical arranger of the Vedas. Nothing certain is known of his life. The sutra, the longest of the classical philosophical sutras, gathers older traditions of Vedic ritual exegesis and is usually placed somewhere between the 3rd century BCE and the 1st century CE; its dating is disputed.
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