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Mīmāṃsā: The Authority of the Word

Mīmāṃsā: The Authority of the Word

Lesson 29 stated a debt: "Mīmāṃsā develops a systematic position on the eternity of the Vedic word … None of that literature was opened for this lesson." This lesson opens the root text.

Mīmāṃsā's second sūtra defines its subject: codanā-lakṣaṇo 'rtho dharmaḥ — dharma is that whose defining mark is injunction (1.1.2).

Lesson 46 set this beside Vaiśeṣika's definition by effect and noted the incompatibility. Here is the argument behind it.

sat-saṃprayoge puruṣasyendriyāṇāṃ buddhi-janma tat pratyakṣam animittaṃ vidyamānopalambhanatvāt — "Perception is the arising of cognition when a person's senses are in contact with something existent; it is not a means here, because it apprehends what is present." (1.1.4)

Month 1

Mīmāṃsā: The Authority of the Word

Month 2 · Lesson 49. Lesson 29 recorded a debt: this course had never opened the school that thinks hardest about language. Here it is — and its most Veda-committed doctrine turns out to require that nobody, including God, wrote the Veda.

4 min

This lesson belongs to Membership. The first six lessons stay free, always. Membership covers Lesson 07 onward, and new lessons as they are published.

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Membership covers Lesson 07 onward, and new lessons as they are published.