Studies in Mimamsa.

• Author: Clooney, Francis X.

Edited by R. C. DWIVEDI. Delhi: MOTILAL BANARSIDASS, 1994. Pp. xvi + 453. Rs 395.

These essays, edited by the late R. C. Dwivedi, honor Dr. Mandan Misra, at the time of publication the Vice-Chancellor of the Lal Bahadur Shastri Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha, New Delhi. It is fitting to honor this respected Sanskrit scholar, administrator, and defender of Sanskrit studies with a volume entirely devoted to Mimamsa, one of the most difficult and important fields within Indological studies. The book collects essays by twenty-five scholars from India and abroad (Australia, Europe, Israel, Japan, the U.S.A.) writing in English or Sanskrit. If we look beyond the useful but limited division which organizes the book - philosophical, linguistic, and hermeneutical studies - we find that the volume accurately represents the several strands in contemporary Mimamsa studies. Some essays focus on one or another particular point; e.g., Kiyotaka Yoshimizu on the Prabhakara critique of Badari, Tomoyasu Takenaka on inference (anumana) in the Bhatta Mimamsa, K. Kunjunni Raja on sentence meaning (vakyartha), Kunio Harikai on the three kinds of supporting declarative statements (arthavada) in the Arthasamgraha (a distinction later modified by Apadeva), and Peri Suryanarayana Sastri on verbal force (akhyata) as understood in four major Mimamsa schools. A second group of essays explores the wider influence of Mimamsa in relation to other schools of Indian thought; e.g., N. S. Ramanujatatacarya on the use of one particular rule (the apacchedanyaya) in Vedanta texts such as the Nyayamrta and the Srutaprakasika, K. T Pandurangi and Francis X. Clooney on the relationship of Mimamsa and Vedanta, John A. Taber and J. M. Verpoorten on the Mimamsa-Buddhist polemics, and Batuknath Shastri Khiste on the coherence of Veda and tantra (or agama) according to...