Mimamsa Philosophy of Language

The book contains three lectures on Mimamsa philosophy of language which were delivered as Wilson Philological lectures at the University of Mumbai in October 2001. The First Lecture deals with the Theory of language the second with the Function of Grammar and the third with the Role of Speaker’s Intention in Verbal Understanding.

The book is the first of its kind to study the purvamimamsa System from the point of view of Philosophy of language. It has been shown here how the standpoint of Purvamimamsa on philosophy of language resembles that of the most recent standpoint on understanding a text in a discourse Analysis in which the intention of the competent reader or capable interpreter plays the most important role.

The author is a reader in the Centre of Advanced study in Sanskrit University of Pune Since 1994 and is the author of a Reconstruction of the Third school of Purvamimamsa (1990) and Some Issues in Nyaya Mimamsa and Dharmasastra (1996) her critical edition of Amrtabindu of Candra and her Marathi Translation of the Tarkapada of the Sabarabhasya have appeared from the Centre of Advanced Study in Sanskrit University of Pune in 2001.

She is an active researcher in the fields of Veda, Nyaya, Mimamsa Dharmasastra, and Jaina and Buddhist Logic and Epistemology. She has over 50 research papers in these areas of her interest to her credit. At present she is working on a source book of Indian logic and epistemology.

Last year i.e. in the year 2001 I was invited by the University of Mumbai to deliver the Wilson Philological Lectureship Endowment series of three Lectures. In keeping with the title of the series I delivered three lectures on Mimamsa philosophy of language.

These three lectures are published here in the book from. I wish the readers of this book should appreciate the fact that Purvamimamsa needs to be studied from a fresh, modern point of view. This will enables us to place ourselves is an appropriate manner in the field of philosophy of Language as such a study will help one pinpoint our own contribution in this modern field of philosopher’s interest.

Purvamimamsa popularly known as mimamsa is one of the six orthodox systems if Indian philosophy. It is comparatively less popular system in the scholastic world mostly because of its connection with the Vedic rituals which are more or less absolute today. But one feeds that today the system of Mimamsa should be focused at from a different angle and should be studied in a fresh modern perspective. The reason behind this is that mimamsa has connection with Vedic rituals is a half truth. To make it complete one must remember that this connection is not direct but is only through the Vedic sentences. In other words mimamsa concerns itself to the Vedic sentences was to help the importance of the rituals at one point of time today when the performance of the rituals at one point of time today when the importance of the rituals has been faded down we should concentrate on the first and foremost concern of Mimamsa namely interpreting Vedic sentences meaningfully and should study the principles of interpretation set forth by the system. Only because these possess a great discowerse analysis philosophy of language etc. in short if we study mimamsa today as the ancient Indian science of sentence interpretation its contribution as such and if we try to find out what mimamsa has to offer to the modern linguistics semantics etc. on one hand to the field of machine translation etc on the other it will certainly yield interesting results.

Having this in mind I had started writing something after studying mimamsa theory of language mimamsa view on grammar, mimamsa view on the intention of speaker and its role in verbal understanding Hence when I was invited by the University of Mumbai to deliver the Wilson Philological lectures Endowment lectures in the year 2001 I decides to talk on Mimamsa philosophy of language.