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The Origin of Mimämsä as a School of Thought
ruşeyatva) and self-sufficient validity (svataḥprāmāṇya) of the Veda. It seems likely that this modification took place in two steps, presumably connected with two persons: the author of Mīmāmsāsūtra 1.1.27-32, and the Vṛttikara cited by Sabara respectively. Together these modifications provided Mīmāmsā with a global, overarching and coherent vision. This vision is unique in the sense that it is radically different from anything else produced by Indian philosophers, 35 and even from the Vedic thought which this school is supposed to represent and continue. The reasons for the creation of such an extraordinary system of thought - even by contemporary Indian standards - must be sought in the particular circumstances and challenges that accompanied its beginnings. We know little about the beginning of Mīmāmsā as a system of thought but for the fact that it must have occurred when a tradition of rational debate and criticism had established itself in India, a tradition which came to determine the shape and development of the main schools of philosophy. All schools that participated in this tradition had to make sure that their systems were coherent and defensible in debates with unfriendly critics. Mīmāmsā in its new garb was coherent and eminently defensible. Even its Achilles heel - the obligation to defend the Veda and therefore its contents, including the many improbable stories it contains - had been properly taken care of: Mimämsä after its transformation no longer had to defend anything found in the Veda except for its injunctions, for it had effectively discarded everything else.
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Having discussed the origin of Mimämsä as a school of thought, I add a few provisional remarks, not about its end, but about the end of the circumstances that gave rise to it. I have suggested that the presence of unfriendly critics, along with the wish or obligation to listen to their criticisms, were responsible for the systematisations resulting in "Mīmāmsā as a school of thought". Among these critics the Buddhists played a particularly important role. Buddhism, however, was in serious decline in the 7th century of the common era. Chinese pilgrims inform us that Buddhist monasteries were largely deserted, a development which went hand in hand with an increase in the number of Hindu temples ("Deva-temples"). 36 In other words, the most redoubtable critics of Brahmanical orthodoxy were losing their position in society, and their criticism - whatever the logical value of their argu
36
The Samkhya philosopher called Madhava must here be mentioned, who, for theoretical reasons, appears to have rejected the idea of world periods followed by renewed creation; cf. Bronkhorst 2000: 61.
Eltschinger 1999, which is in this respect based on Joshi 1967, Chapter XII; the Chinese pilgrims are primarily Hsüan-tsang and I-ching, among others.
