[Advaita-l] Purva Mimamsa from the Vedantic perspective

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

On Wed, 18 Feb 2004, S Jayanarayanan wrote:

> The word "atheism", AFAIK, does not have an exact counterpart in
> Sanskrit.

True.

> According to Ganganath Jha's translation of the
> shlokavArttika, KumArila says in his tenth invocatory verse that he
> wants to turn mImAmsA towards theism, but never affirms the Ishvara,
> and in fact argues that there cannot exist an omniscient being! I don't
> have KumArila's original Sanskrit works with me, but I believe it is
> quite wrong to translate the word "astika" as a theist.

I agree.  That may be the popular usage these days but it is not accurate.
Among the astika darshans, Samkhya is also non-theistic.

> In his section
> on "AtmavAda", KumArila affirms the existence of the *self* and ends it
> with "hence concludes the refutation of atheism". Evidently, according
> to KumArila, *denying the self* is equivalent to atheism, not denying
> the existence of an Ishvara who awards the fruits of Karma.
>

No vedantin of any stripe can accept such a formulation of Ishvara.  Like
"classic" Samkhya, classic PM was absorbed and reinterpreted in a more
Vedantic way.

-- 
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>
It's a girl! See the pictures - http://www.braincells.com/shailaja/