The duty of the subject? Bringing together different cognitions

The following is another statement by Utpaladeva about the fact that the subject is established insofar as it bridges two distinct moments (the past experience of something and its present memory). Utpaladeva's usage of viṣayin is noteworthy, insofar as this usage enables Utpaladeva to elaborate a cogent deduction without making it appear as a tautology:

The remembering subject is implicitly established because it bridges together two moments of time, since the statement that [memory occurs] in the present time depends on the distinction of the [present] light of memory from [the experience which occurred] at a past time. And the experienced object, accompanied by the previous experience, insofar as it is determined by its own time, which is past, is not distinct from what has it as its content (i.e., the present cognition) (viṣayin) determined by the present time. In fact, if the content, characterised by the fact that it does not deviate from what has it as its content (i.e., the present cognition) (viṣayin), were distinct from the light [i.e., the subject], there would be an incongruity. Therefore [the Vṛttikāra] said "appearing". […] This has been already said and will be said again.

(smṛtiprakāśasya tātkālikatvaviśeṣaṇena vartamānatoktyā kāladvayānusandhānāt smartṛsiddhir
upakṣiptā, na ca smṛtijñānasya vartamānāvacchinnasya viṣayiṇaḥ pūrvānubhavasahito ’nubhūto ’rtho ’tītarūpasvakālāvacchinno bhinnātmaiva viṣayyabhraṃśamānatālakṣaṇasya viṣayatvasya prakāśād bhede saty anupapatteḥ. tad ahā “avabhāsamāna” iti. […] etac coktaṃ purastād vakṣyate ca.)

(Vivṛti on ĪPK 1.4.3, edited by Raffaele Torella in Mélanges tantriques à la mémoire d'Hélène Brunner, my translation).


For other translations of Utpaladeva's Vivṛti, check the tag "Śaiva" and here.

Not only memory

A subject –according to many philosophers, from John Locke to Sidney Shoemaker– is needed in order to account for memory. In his Vivṛti on ĪPK 1.4.3, Utpaladeva adds the case of projective cognitions, in which one's subjectivity is projected in a future time:

Thus, it is illogical that the perception of a past object and the object become contents of memory if the following two conditions not occur:
1. the manifestation [of the object] within memory at the present time,
2. the fact that there are two kinds of cognitions of the object (i.e., its actual memory and its past experience).
Therefore a subject of memory and experience is said to be established. And this subject consists of the unity made of the [faculty] of bringing together [memory and experience]. Hence [the Vṛttikāra] said "in this way the experience…". With "etc" (in the Vṛtti) a cognition such as the projective knowledge (of the future) is expressed. This has the form "this object will be perceived again by me". And it must be included because the [present] notion of a projective cognition must be brought together also with the experience of a future time.

(tad evaṃ vartamānasmṛtiprakāśatāṃ vinā paurvakālikārthānubhavasya arthasya ca tajjñānadvayātmatāṃ vinā smṛtiviṣayībhāva eva nopapadyata ity uktā smṛtyanubhavayor
anusandhānamayaikarūpātmasiddhiḥ. tad āha “evam anubhava” iti. ādigrahaṇenotprekṣādisaṃvid uktānubhaviṣyate punar artho mayeti bhaviṣyatkālānubhavenāpy utprekṣābuddher anusandhānāt.)

(edited by Raffaele Torella in Mélanges tantriques à la mémoire d'Hélène Brunner, my translation).

For other translations of Utpaladeva's Vivṛti, check the tag "Śaiva" and here.

Do we need priorities?

As a latin motto runs, the things to be learnt are many and our life is short (Ars longa vita brevis), hence, no matter how much we would like to do it, we will not be able to read all the 20 millions of Sanskrit manuscripts waiting to be edited.

Hence, setting priorities is a fundamental task. Priorities are needed not just for theoretical purposes, but also for historical ones. In other words, I am not suggesting that we should decide which texts are theoretically more interesting in order to focus on them and forget the others, just as it happened in Ancient and Classical India. I am an historian of philosophy and am particularly fond of authors deemed to be "minor" or less-significant, because they can help us reconstructing the cultural background of an era, and because they are often more helpful than their well-known predecessors (or successors) in understanding a difficult point.

For instance, no one could start one's journey in Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā reading Prabhākara himself, since his texts are hardly understandable at all (as acknowledged even by his contemporaries). The texts to be understood as ``prioritary" should, by contrast, be the ones which can spread light on the others.

On the importance of reading primers, see here.

Temporal and spatial arrangement

What delimits an abstract entity, like a sacrifice?
Indian thinkers were well aware of the fact that its outer spatial and temporal boundaries might have not been the same as its ideal boundaries. The end (anta) of a sacrifice was not necessarily the same as its completion and the sacrificer should be aware of it, in order to avoid reaching the temporal end of the sacrifice before having reached its completion.
The latter is called saṃsthā, which is an interesting term, meaning at the same time "completion" and "form". In later texts, each sacrifice may have more than one saṃsthā (form) and the various saṃsthā are distinguished because of their completing formulas. In the Śrauta Sūtras, the meaning of "completion" prevails. Lilian Silburn, in her well-known Instant et cause writes that

saṃsthā designates [perhaps because it delimits it] the very structure of the sacrifice (p.60).

Silburn further notes that saṃsthā is the temporal foundation of a sacrifice, whereas pratiṣṭhā is its spatial foundation (see also Thite, Sacrifice in the Brāhmaṇa-Texts, 1975: 274):

saṃsthā consists of a coordination of structures within time, [since] rūpa, the form, is considered to be tantamount to an activity (karman) (p.61).

It might be interesting to note that "temporal" refers to the dynamic aspect of the sacrifice, rather than to its diachronic dimension. The historical dimension of rituals and of their evolution is, by contrast, completely out of sight.

Arranging the sacrifice in space

Mīmāṃsā, Grammar and Kalpasūtra share a common terminology and the more one looks at it, the better one realises how it reflects a spatial (and not temporal) organization of concepts (see these comments). Let me focus on one example.

According to Śabara and all subsequent Mīmāṃsakas, prasaṅga is the topic of 12. Its standard definitions in mature Mīmāṃsā run more or less as follows:

so ’yam anyārthānuṣṭhitāṅgair anyasyo ’pakārarūpaḥ prasaṅgo dvādaśa ucyate (MNS 12.1.1).
This is prasaṅga, which has the form of assistance for one thing by means of subsidiaries performed for the sake of another, and which is spoken of in the Twelfth Book ([Benson 2010, 766]).

In other words, prasaṅga refers to:
• a function
• which applies to more than one item
• insofar as it has been made for the purpose of one item, but then ends up helping another, too.

A further requirement, which is explicit in Śabara and only implicit in the above definition is an explicit prescription prescribing for a certain occurrence the assistance originally performed for a previous one. In fact, since the assistance which is given through prasaṅga is, unlike tantra, not necessary present insofar as it pertains to the structure of the rite, it is only through an explicit prescription that one understands that it is needed.
In other words, all elements prescribed in the context of the Darśapūrṇamāsa sacrifice apply through tantra to all the six rites composing it, independently of whether they are actually needed there, just because the six rite share the same basic procedure (another meaning of tantra). By contrast, the assistance offered through prasaṅga applies to a sacrifice different from the one it had been initially performed for. Therefore it only applies to this later sacrifice if it is explicitly needed there, i.e., if in the later sacrifice there is a prescription enjoining the
same assistance.
To summarize:

tantra | prasaṅga
structural | non structural
applies anyway | applies only if prescribed
same sacrifice |different sacrifice or rite

On tantra and prasaṅga, see here. On tantra and absence, see here. On tantra as a technical term, see here and here.

How can Sacred Texts be understood?

The theistic traditions posit that it is possible to understand the Sacred Texts by the will of God, who reveals them. In the atheistic Mīmāṃsā, on the other hand, the possibility of understanding is based on our linguistic expertise: We have to rely on worldly meanings of words when reading the Sacred Texts since we have no other key to their interpretation. Hence, the mastery of worldly meanings is a pre-condition for the understanding of a Sacred Text. But what if that text prescribes a kind of duty which is fully new (apūrva), unprecedented, that is, non-attainable through any other (worldly) kind of knowledge? Should it not remain beyond any possible grasp?

This issue raises thought-provoking questions for all theological discourse. How can the non-human be expressed in terms accessible to human beings?

Let me now sketch the problem and its solution within Tantrarahasya IV.

Rāmānujācārya lets a Prābhākara propose the option that even in worldly sentences prescribing something to be done, what one grasps is the pure ``ought", so that one can grasp the ought in itself even in mundane commands (TR IV 9.6). Rāmānujācārya dissents. According to him, it is only through its link to action, which can be experienced even in this world, that we can understand what an ought means, and, hence, understand it even in its apūrva-garb in the Sacred Texts. Thus, Rāmānujācārya confirms the Mīmāṃsā commitment to our common experience even in regard to the Veda.
This final position of Rāmānujācārya has linguistic roots. According to both the Bhāṭṭa and the Prābhākara school of Mīmāṃsā, the relation betweeen a word and the entity it means is fixed (nitya). Nonetheless, this does not mean that everyone, upon hearing for the first time a word, automatically understands its meaning.
Rather, one needs first to acquire proficiency in language through exposure to the usage of elders and through witnessing the connection of this verbal usage to physical actions (both these aspects may be referred to as vyavahāra). E.g., after having heard one's grandfather ordering:“Bring [the] cow!," one sees one's father bringing a cow. Through many similar instances, one eventually learns the meaning of the words “Bring!” and “cow”.

However, according to the Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā, the meaning conveyed by the Veda is a duty (kārya) that is unprecedented (apūrva). Hence, how could it be possible to learn the relation between a word and a meaning in the case of an unprecedented duty (apūrvakārya) through the usage of one's seniors? And if this is not possible, how could one understand the meaning of the Vedic words referring to it?
In fact, the relation between Vedic words and the unprecedented duty is fixed, but a meaning can be grasped only by people who have previously understood, by means of the linguistic usage of senior speakers, the relation between the signifiying word and its meaning. Hence, a relation lying beyond the possibility of being grasped in the usage of senior speakers would be fixed, but unattainable and useless for human beings. Nor can it be said that one can learn the meaning of Vedic words referring to an apūrvakārya through the Veda itself, as in this case there would be a vicious circle (the elders' usage would depend on the Veda, whose understanding depends on the elders' usage).

For some tables on this topic, see here.

Offer and demand in Indology

A close friend looks for someone able to identify secondary sources in Jayanta's Nyāyamañjarī and cannot find any suitable candidate. A colleague looks since months for someone who could collate manuscripts. Several other colleagues tell me how hard it is to find scholars who are willing to help their projects.
In all these cases, the people would be payed well enough (for Indological standards) and I have a long list of acquaintances who are brillant Sanskritists and jobless. So, why does not the offer meet the demand? I can think of two possible solutions:

1. 1. Sanskritists are not trained to work in a team. Most of all, they are trained to work as lonely scholars and cannot accept to work for someone else's projects.

If so, there is hardly something we can do, apart from trying to make young scholars more aware of what they really want to achieve (does lonely work really work?…). But a different option may be:

1. 2. There is no way offer can meet demand.

If the latter is the case, one could fancy of a database for people looking/offering temporary jobs for which knowledge of Sanskrit and/or Indian philosophy and/or Indian palaeography is/are required. What do readers think? What is the real answer? And what could help?