[Advaita-l] Regarding the religious marks of purva mimamsakas

[V Subrahmanian]

On Fri, Jul 6, 2018 at 1:28 PM, Kalyan via Advaita-l <
advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:

The mimamsakas did not believe in Ishwara, so I would be very surprised if
> they had any concept like krishnarpanamastu etc. Early samkhya is also
> atheistic, so same goes for that school.
>
> As far as I know, neither do early images of Vishnu show any naamam, nor
> do early images of Shiva show any vibhuti, on the forehead.


Are there any authentic photographs of 'early' images of Vishnu, Shiva,
etc.?  Similar images of humans, depicting Brahmanas, too will be
interesting to examine for their marks.


> These practices are probably later developments, perhaps driven by
> sectarian considerations. Even in the case of Shankara, no one really knows
> whether he donned any religious marks.
>

By the time of Shankara we had all the major Puranas like Shiva Purana and
Vishnu purana which he has cited in the VSN Bhashya. In the Brahma sutra
and Upanishad bhashyas Shankara talks about temple, worship, archana with
flowers, etc. So the popular worship as a practice was there well
established. In the works of Shaiva Nayanmars who flourished just before
and during the time of Shankara we read accounts of Brahmins being
agnihotris, vedic scholars, worshipers of Shiva, with bhasma dharana, etc.
Sureshwara says Shankara is from Atri gotra.  We can reasonably assume
caste marks were in use in Shankara's family.  Also there are Upanishads
that talk of what kind of bhasma is to be used by which Ashrama.

There are injunctions in the smriti texts like 'religious karma performed
without the marks on the forehead do not give fruit, etc.'  My question was
on this aspect too:  whether  purva mimamsakas  adhered to such injunctions
and if yes, what kind of marks did they don.


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