CDS (II) 2022 General Knowledge · Question 37 of 120

Correct — C, Purva-Mimamsa. Kumarila Bhatta and Prabhakara are the two great commentators of the Mimamsa school, and they are so central to it that the school's later history is written as the story of their two sub-schools — the Bhatta and the Prabhakara. Mimamsa means enquiry or investigation, and Purva-Mimamsa is the 'earlier' enquiry, concerned with the ritual portion of the Veda, the karma-kanda. Its founding text is the Mimamsa Sutra of Jaimini, and its core position is that dharma is known from the injunctions of the Veda and from nowhere else, that the Veda is authorless and eternal, and that correct performance of prescribed action is what produces its result. Both men wrote in the seventh to eighth centuries CE, both defended Vedic authority against Buddhist logicians, and they disagree with each other on how a command produces knowledge and on the nature of error — but they disagree inside one school.

• (a)Lokayata — The exact opposite position. Lokayata, also called Charvaka, is the materialist school — it accepts only perception as a means of knowledge, denies the authority of the Veda and denies rebirth, and it is classed as heterodox precisely for that. Kumarila spent much of his work defending what Lokayata rejects.
• (b)Madhyamika — A Buddhist school, not a Vedic one. Madhyamaka is Nagarjuna's philosophy of emptiness, and Kumarila and Prabhakara were among the sharpest Brahmanical critics of Buddhist thought of their time.
• (d)Uttara-Mimamsa — The one that catches careful students, because the word Mimamsa is right there. Uttara-Mimamsa is the 'later' enquiry, which is Vedanta — the enquiry into the Upanishads and the knowledge portion of the Veda, with the Brahma Sutra of Badarayana as its text and Shankara, Ramanuja and Madhva among its commentators. Kumarila and Prabhakara belong to the ritual half, not the metaphysical one.

The six orthodox systems of Indian philosophy are Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Samkhya, Yoga, Mimamsa and Vedanta, orthodox meaning that each accepts the authority of the Veda. They are conventionally paired — Nyaya with Vaisheshika, Samkhya with Yoga, and Mimamsa with Vedanta. The last pair splits one text into two enquiries: Purva-Mimamsa takes the earlier, ritual portion and asks what one ought to do, while Uttara-Mimamsa or Vedanta takes the later, Upanishadic portion and asks what is real. Purva-Mimamsa is also called Karma-Mimamsa for that reason, and its answer to the question of liberation is action rather than knowledge.

The whole item turns on the prefix. Purva means earlier and Uttara means later, and the distinction is about which part of the Veda the school interprets, not about when the school arose. Once that is fixed, the two names in the stem attach easily, because Kumarila and Prabhakara are known for one thing above all — the defence of Vedic ritual authority against Buddhist critics, which is Purva-Mimamsa's business and not Vedanta's. The other two options are there to catch a student who is guessing on sound: Lokayata and Madhyamika are both heterodox, one materialist and one Buddhist, and neither could contain a thinker who argues the Veda is eternal and authorless. A useful memory hook is that Kumarila is the subject of a famous tradition in which he is said to have debated Shankara — a Purva-Mimamsaka against an Uttara-Mimamsaka, which is exactly the contrast this question tests.

• Purva-Mimamsa, also called Karma-Mimamsa, interprets the ritual portion of the Veda; its founding text is Jaimini's Mimamsa Sutra.
• Kumarila Bhatta and Prabhakara are its two principal commentators, and the Bhatta and Prabhakara sub-schools are named after them.
• Uttara-Mimamsa is Vedanta, the enquiry into the Upanishads, with Badarayana's Brahma Sutra as its text.
• The six orthodox systems are Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Samkhya, Yoga, Mimamsa and Vedanta; Lokayata or Charvaka, Buddhism and Jainism are the heterodox ones.
• Purva-Mimamsa holds that the Veda is authorless and eternal, and that dharma is known from its injunctions alone.

• Picking Uttara-Mimamsa because the word Mimamsa appears in it; the prefix decides the answer.
• Assuming purva and uttara refer to chronology rather than to which portion of the Veda is being interpreted.
• Confusing Madhyamika, a Buddhist school, with a Vedic one because the name sounds Sanskritic.

As a thinker-to-school match, or as an odd-one-out question on which pair does not belong among the six orthodox systems.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The founding text of the Purva-Mimamsa school of philosophy is the

  • (a)Brahma Sutra of Badarayana
  • (b)Mimamsa Sutra of Jaimini
  • (c)Yoga Sutra of Patanjali
  • (d)Nyaya Sutra of Gautama

  Answer(b) Mimamsa Sutra of Jaimini — the Brahma Sutra belongs to Uttara-Mimamsa, that is, to Vedanta.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following schools of Indian philosophy is classed as heterodox because it rejects the authority of the Veda?

  • (a)Vaisheshika
  • (b)Samkhya
  • (c)Lokayata
  • (d)Mimamsa

  Answer(c) Lokayata — the materialist Charvaka school, which admits only perception as a means of knowledge.