Mimamsa: Interpreting the Vedas
The Mimamsa school of Hindu philosophy: its focus on Vedic ritual and dharma, its rules of interpretation, its theories of language and knowledge, and its influence on Hindu law and Vedanta.
Mimamsa is the school of Hindu philosophy devoted to interpreting the Vedas, especially their commands about ritual and duty. Its followers held that the Vedas are eternal and authorless, and that they are the only reliable source of knowledge about dharma. In defending this view, Mimamsa philosophers developed influential theories of language, knowledge and interpretation.
The word mimamsa means “investigation” or “enquiry”. The school is also called Purva Mimamsa, “the earlier enquiry”, because it deals with the earlier, ritual portions of the Vedas. Vedanta, which deals with the Upanishads at the end of the Vedas, is called Uttara Mimamsa, “the later enquiry”.
Texts and teachers
The root text is the Mimamsa Sutras of Jaimini, the longest of the philosophical sutras, probably compiled in the last centuries BCE. The earliest surviving commentary is by Shabara. In the 7th century, two great thinkers founded rival sub-schools: Kumarila Bhatta, who also wrote influential critiques of Buddhism, and Prabhakara.
Dharma and the Vedas
The Mimamsa Sutras open with the words “Now, therefore, the enquiry into dharma”. For Mimamsa, dharma consists of the duties commanded by the Vedas, above all the performance of ritual sacrifices. Perception and reason can tell us about the world as it is, but not about what we ought to do or what invisible results our actions will have. Only the Vedas can do that.
Mimamsa therefore treated the Vedas primarily as a body of commands (vidhi), such as “one who desires heaven should perform the sacrifice”. Other passages, such as hymns and stories, were explained as supporting these commands by praising the action or warning against its neglect.
Eternal words
Mimamsa argued that the Vedas have no author, human or divine. Words, their meanings and the connection between them are eternal; the Vedas are an eternal arrangement of eternal words, transmitted without beginning from teacher to pupil. Because no author means no possibility of an author's error, the Vedas are infallible.
No need for a creator
Classical Mimamsa did not accept a creator God. The world has always existed, and the results of rituals are produced not by a god's favour but by an unseen force (apurva) generated by the ritual itself, which bears fruit in the future, even in a later life. Kumarila argued against the Nyaya proofs of God. Some later Mimamsa writers became more open to theism.
Knowledge is valid by default
Mimamsa taught that knowledge is intrinsically valid (svatah pramanya): a belief should be accepted as true unless there is a specific reason to doubt it. This principle supported the authority of the Vedas, which could not be contradicted by any other source on matters of dharma.
Rules of interpretation
Mimamsa's greatest legacy is its detailed method for interpreting texts: how to resolve apparent contradictions, how to decide which statements are binding, and how to apply general rules to particular cases. These rules were adopted by scholars of the Dharmashastras and became the basis of traditional Hindu legal reasoning. Vedanta philosophers also used Mimamsa principles to interpret the Upanishads.
Mimamsa today
As an independent school, Mimamsa declined after the medieval period, overshadowed by Vedanta and devotional religion. Yet its influence persists in Hindu ritual practice, in the traditional reverence for the Vedas as eternal and authorless, and in the methods of Sanskrit legal and textual scholarship.
Sources and further reading
- Francis X. Clooney, Thinking Ritually: Rediscovering the Purva Mimamsa of Jaimini (De Nobili, 1990).
- John Taber, A Hindu Critique of Buddhist Epistemology: Kumarila on Perception (Routledge, 2005).
- M. Hiriyanna, Outlines of Indian Philosophy (Allen & Unwin, 1932), chapter 12.