[Advaita-l] Glimpses of Vedanta in the Purva Mimamsa doctrine

Raghav Kumar Dwivedula raghavkumar00 at gmail.com
Fri Oct 29 23:56:34 EDT 2021


Namaste Subbu ji

Is there any reference in any mImAmsA text regarding the absence of
kartRtva and even bhoktRtva in their highest attainment?

Indeed, the usual theological VaiShNava dvaitins are no where in the
picture in the engagement and ancient debates between Advaita and mImAmsA.
(I think that is the main point you were making in your post?)

At a popular level even with many Advaita students, mImAmsa is wrongly
associated *only* with karmas (understood as fire rituals involving homas,
Yajnas etc with some upAsana). I was disabused of this notion when reading
an outline of the great mImAmsaka sri maNDana miSra's brahma siddhi. The
clear emphasis is seen on saguNa brahma upAsana and nididhyAsana (albeit
without a pramANa based approach) of the aham-brahmAsmi mahAvAkya. (In such
a mImAmsaka view of nididhyAsana meditation, the word implies nirguNa
upAsana rather than how advaitins view nididhyAsana as part of pramANa
operation.)

Clearly they came very close to Advaita with the GYAna karma samyccaya idea
but stopped short of accepting GYAnam as the sufficient means for moxa. And
therefore, to caricaturize all mImAmsakas as merely committed to Yajnas for
attaining svarga is incorrect. GYAna karma samyccaya vAda is also there in
mImAmsa. There, the person attains moxa by constant dhyAnam/upAsanam (which
involves effort and is puruSa-tantra) on the vedAntic mahAvAkyas. The word
nididhyAsanam is used for that too by them. This type of mImAmsaka
nididhyAsanam is distinguished from vedAntic nididhyAsanam (which is
pramANa-based) in upadesha sAhasrI. All these debates show the close
proximity of the two systems of mImAmsA and Advaita.

Om
Raghav

On Fri, 29 Oct, 2021, 5:13 pm V Subrahmanian via Advaita-l, <
advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:

> In the Jaimini doctrine one can see many Upanishadic passages cited. The
> two seminal texts of this system, Kumarila Bhatta's 'Tantra Vartika' and
> 'Shloka Vartika' too one encounters passages from the Vedanta.
>
> Commentary to Tantra Vartika, 'Nyaya Sudah' of Bhatta Someshwara, too has
> discussed the Vedantic concepts of Saguna and Nirguna Brahman and their
> application in the Mimamsa doctrine.
>
> So also the 'Mimamsa shastra kutuhala' of Kamalakara Bhatta too cites
> Kumarila Bhatta so conclude that the moksha of this doctrine is
> non-different from that of the Vedanta.
>
> Also, Sri Ayyanna Dikshita in his 'Vyasa Tatparya Nirnaya' has cited the
> Shloka Vartika and Parthasarathy Misra's 'Shastra Dipika' to emphasise that
> the Mimamsa doctrine has considered Advaita alone as their Vedantic
> opponent and rejected it.
>
> Images from all the above texts are appended here:
>
> https://groups.google.com/g/advaitin/c/vTliXKmJ-0c
>
> regards
> subbu
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