A group blog of scholars exploring Indian philosophy
Words (for the Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā authors) get connected into a complex sentence meaning through proximity (sannidhi), semantic fitness (yogyatā) and syntactic expectancy (ākāṅkṣā). These three criteria correspond to the requirement of being uttered one after the other with no intervening Continue reading Proximity, semantic fitness and syntactic expectancy as criteria for the sentence meaning
I received the following announcement from Karen O’Brien-Kop and I am glad to advertise it, also because several readings will be conducted by long-term colleagues and friends of mine, including also “our” Alex Watson. You can read Karen’s very interesting Continue reading Sanskrit Reading Room at Soas (London)
The dates of the next Nalanda dialogue are: February the 22nd ton 24th. I recently received the following announcement about it (unedited):
Within his Mīmāṃsā commentary, the Seśvaramīmāṃsā, Veṅkaṭanātha explicitly dissents from Śabara (also) in his commentary on Pūrva Mīmāṃsā Sūtra (henceforth PMS) 1.1.31 on Vedic words seemingly expressing proper names, e.g., Prāvāhaṇi and Babara (which are used by opponents as an Continue reading Dissent among a Viśiṣṭādvaitin and a Mīmāṃsaka: What do Vedic words mean?
In his Seśvaramīmāṃsā (ad 1.1.29), Veṅkaṭanātha discusses the problem of the authorship of the Veda while being a Mīmāṃsaka, but also trying to condede something to theism. For instance, he is less straightforward than Mīmāṃsā authors in ruling out the Continue reading Did ṛṣis author the Veda? A Mīmāṃsā and Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta view about it
Readers will remember the “Walking down the footsteps of the Buddha”, for which we published an invitation by Debajyoti Gangopadhyay here. Now Debajyoti informed me that due to circumstances beyond his control the dates have been shifted to 16th to Continue reading Nalanda dialogue: dates rescheduled
This anniversary edition, hosted by the Pedagogical University of Krakow, will take place in Krakow (Cracow), Poland, June 8-11th 2018. CONFERENCE THEME: Power and Creativity. Keynote Speaker: Graham Parkes (University of Vienna), “Will to Power and the Field of Dao/De: Continue reading 50th Annual Conference of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy
Patrick O’Donnell, who also contributed to this blog, recently published an interesting response to the above argument, as found in this article by Gaston Dorren. Dorren’s main claim is: While all disciplines attract the occasional eccentric, it seems that two Continue reading “Linguistics in the premodern world? Just nonsense!”
Mīmāṃsakas of both the Bhāṭṭa and the Prābhākara subschools refute the idea of a sphoṭa carrying the meaning and being different from what we experience, namely phonemes and words, since this contradicts the principle of parsimony and our common experience. Continue reading Meanings of Words and Sentences in Mīmāṃsā
The following passage is from Yāmuna’s Ātmasiddhi and it is a description of the Advaita position about the brahman as being tantamount to consciousness: ato ‘syā na meyaḥ kaścid api dharmo ‘sti. ato nirdhūtanikhilabhedavikalpanirdharmaprakāśamātraikarasā kūṭasthanityā saṃvid evātmā paramātmā ca. yathāha Continue reading Viśiṣṭādvaitins speaking of Advaitins