[Advaita-l] Reliable work for Purva Mimamsa

[S Jayanarayanan]

--- venkata  subramanian
<venkat_advaita at rediffmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Dear All,
> 
> can anyone guide as to a reliable translation for
> the Purva 
> Mimamsa Bhashya ? 

The principal treatise in pUrva-mImAmsA (PM) is
Jaimini's pUrva mImAmsA sUtra. It is held in the same
esteem in PM as BAdarAyaNa's Brahma sUtra in VedAnta.
Traditionally, Jaimini is considered to be a disciple
of BAdarAyaNa. Shankara Himself quotes from Jaimini's
work occassionally to support his thesis. 

There is a BhAshhya on Jaimini's work by
shabarasvAmin, on which the vArTika by KumArila BhaTTa
consists of three parts: 
(1) shlokavArTika (1.1 of Jaimini) 
(2) tantravArTika (1.2 - 3.8 of Jaimini) 
(3) tuptikA (remaining chapters 4-12 of Jaimini) 
and is considered to be the most comprehensive work
ever on PM. The first two parts alone total some 2-3
thousand pages! 

Here are the translated PM books that I've come
across:

[1] "The Purva mimamsa sutras of Jaimini": chapters
I-III Translated with an original commentary by
Ganganath Jha. Allahabad, Panini Office, 1916. (New
York, AMS Press, 1974). 

[2] "Slokavartika" (of Kumarila Bhatta) / translated
from the original Sanskrit, with extracts from the
commentaries "Kasika" of Sucarita Misra and
"Nyayaratnakara" of Partha Sarthi Misra (by) Ganga
Nath Jha. Delhi, India : Sri Satguru Publications :
distributed by Indian Books Centre, 1983. 

[3] "Tantravarttika" : a commentary on Sabara's Bhasya
on the Purvamimamsa sutras of Jaimini / translated
into English by Ganganatha Jha. Reprint ed. Delhi,
Pilgrims Book Pvt. Ltd. 1998. 

The PM school branches like this:

Jaimini (founder)
  |
  |-->ShabarasvAmin
      |
      |-->PrabhAkara
      |
      |-->KumArila BhaTTa (key proponent)
          |
          |-->Sucharita Mishra
          |
          |-->PArthasArathi Mishra
          |
          |-->Someshvara BhaTTa

(
http://www.philosophy.ru/library/asiatica/indica/edu/02/5.html

or http://www.advaita-vedanta.org/avhp/mimved.html )

Just as Shankara's chief opponent is the PM tradition,
so too KumArila's is the Bauddha tradition. Scholars
of PM opine that KumArila's knowledge of Buddhism far
exceeded that of Shankara, and Buddhism was almost
certainly "defeated" by KumArila and his followers and
not by Shankara. 

> by the way, is the Sanskrit
> Original readable 
> easily or is just a Greek and latin like the
> Bhamathi and its 
> sub-commentaries ?!!
> 

IMHO, the Sanskrit used by the PM school is tough. I
feel Shankara's Sanskrit is easily understandable with
the aid of Apte's Sanskrit dictionary, but the PM
folks (especially KumArila) use very complicated
Sanskrit (unnecesarily?) which takes forever to
decipher, and is incomprehensible without a good
translation. But if your knowledge of Sanskrit is
good, you may have no difficulty. 

Regards,

Kartik

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