[Advaita-l] A Brief Introduction to pUrva mImAmsA - 8 (Miscellaneous Topics, Conclusion)

[Amuthan Arunkumar R]

namo nArAyaNAya!

dear shrI jayanArAyaNan,

first of all, a heartfelt THANKS to you for the
wonderful series of articles on pUrva mImAmsA. i'm
sure a lot of people have gained a good understanding
of the basic tenets of PM from your posts. personally,
i have learnt a lot from your PM series and thank you
once again for the posts.

the last time your article appeared, i digged up the
archives and read the earlier ones, but unfortunately,
i didn't note down where those articles are. since the
articles on PM are "spread over a few years" and since
searching the archives isn't such a pleasurable task,
i kindly request you to give references to all the
previous articles and if possible, group all these and
put them in the advaita-vedanta site so that all the
members can benefit from them.

coming back to your present post, i have some doubts:
  
--- S Jayanarayanan <sjayana_at_yahoo_dot_com> wrote:
> 
> with a common ground. For example, both accept the
> Vedas as svataH-pramANa,
> because the Vedas have already been established as
> dharma. In order to
> controvert the Vedas as the basis of dharma, one
> must provide an alternative
> means of knowing dharma that is "better" than the
> Vedas. Since all the
> alternatives for knowing dharma fail on account of
> their dependence upon
> sense-experience, inference, or defective
> authorship, they're all rejected as
> unauthoritative on dharma.
> 

both the vedAntin and the mImAmsaka accept veda-s as
apauruSheyam. traditionally, the pUrvapakShin-s to
this view are the bauddha-s. but the bauddha-s are a
special category of people who uphold a philosophy
based on kShanikatva (and hence, they cannot talk
about the independent validity of their own
shAstra-s). but consider the present situation where
we have the religious texts of other religions like
christianity or islam which do not have a nihilistic
world view as buddhism. i think the arguments provided
by mImAmsaka-s for establishing the prAmANyam of the
veda-s were directed mainly against the bauddha-s. the
same arguments are certainly not applicable for these
modern religions. the veda-s and the bible / koran
obviously have a difference of opinion on different
ethical issues and they  claim their contents to be
revealed and (hence) apauruSheyam (let us for the
moment let apauruSheyatvam of texts to be valid even
if God 'composed' them). so, to decide if a particular
action is right or wrong, one has to look for a
pramANa and now the question will arise - which of
these (veda-s, bible etc.) is the pramANa? since this
questions the fundamental axiom of PM that the veda-s
are the only pramANa-s when it comes to issues
relating to dharma, and since the ones who raise this
question do not uphold a nihilistic viewpoint as the
bauddha-s, it is a valid question. how would a
mImAmsaka answer this? since advaitin-s agree with
mImAmsaka-s on issues related to dharma, the question
remains an important one for an advaitin also. 

--- S Jayanarayanan <sjayana_at_yahoo_dot_com> wrote:
>
> ... and the body is
> not cognized during the three states of being -
> waking, dream and deep sleep
> (when the Self is). Therefore, the Self is not the
> body, but the body is a
> superimposition on the Self owing to ignorance
> (avidyA).
> 

i don't understand how the body is not cognized during
the three states. it is certainly perceived in the
waking state. in case i've missed the point, please
let me know.  

--- S Jayanarayanan <sjayana_at_yahoo_dot_com> wrote:
> 
> 1) Ganganath Jha writes, "KumArila's reference to
> Tamil loosely as
> AndhradrAviDa is further evidence in favour of
> general ignorance of the Aryans
> about the South" [14]. It is unlikely that Jha would
> be mistaken on this point.
> 

what was the time period of gangAnAth jha? presently,
the Aryan invasion theory is not accepted by
historians. it was a completely baseless speculation
of the british formulated mainly to assist their
'divide and conquer' (and also 'divide and convert'!)
policy. saying that the Aryan-s were ignorant of the
south in this context is especially unacceptable since
bhagavatpAda himself was from the south and a
contemporary of kumArila bhaTTa. i'm sure no one is
going to say that sha~Nkara was not an Arya!!

vAsudevaH sarvaM,
aparyAptAmR^itaH.  


Amuthan Arunkumar R,
Final year, B.Tech/M.Tech Dual Degree,
Dept. of Aerospace Engg., IIT Madras.

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