A Mīmāṁsaka Reading Kṛṣṇa's song: Pārthasārathi Miśra And the Bhagavad-gītā

In: Journal of Vaishnava Studies, Volume 28.1. Fall 2019 A Mīmāṁsaka Reading Kṛṣṇa’s Song: Pārthasārathi Miśra and the Bhagavad-gītā Aleksandar Uskokov Introduction T his paper looks at how the celebrated Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṁsaka Pārthasārathi Miśra drew on the Bhagavad-gītā (BhG) in his works Śāstra-dīpikā (ŚD) and Nyāya-ratnākara (NRĀ) to advance several arguments concerning the Sāṅkhya ontology of the BhG and the Mīmāṁsā understanding of the true nature of the soul and the attainment of liberation. These arguments are treated here in the following order: that the theistic philosophy of Sāṅkhya vocalized in the BhG cannot be true at face value; that the individual souls are plural in number, omni- present in dimension, and have as their common characteristic qualitative same- ness but not numeric identity; that knowledge of the soul as distinct from matter is not directly efficacious in the pursuit of liberation, but meditation on the soul is; and that the sense of self is not an illusory feature of personhood but the mark through which one knows the soul as the substance behind it. In narrating these arguments, the paper also documents the few references to the BhG by two of the most important early Mīmāṁsakas, Kumārila Bhaṭṭa (ca. 600-650 CE) and Prabhākara (ca. 620-680 CE). These references are significant in their own right, being relatively early evidence in systematic thought that the BhG has gained recognition as a text somewhat independent from the context of the Mahābhārata. 197 198 Journal of Vaishnava Studies The paper argues that Pārthasārathi read the BhG as he would otherwise read an Upaniṣad: as a text concerned with knowledge of the eternal soul, which is required for the performance of ritual, and with meditation. It also shows that while Pārthasārathi’s acquaintance and engagement with the BhG was signifi- cant, it was not formative for his views but solely corroborative. Since the paper treads the line between two systems of thought that do not sit well together, i.e., the non-theistic Mīmāṁsā and the highly theistic Vaiṣṇavism, represented by its most influential text the BhG, it also considers what Kṛṣṇa personally might have meant to Pārthasārathi in the grand scheme of things, contributing, thus, to the theme of Vaiṣṇavism and other Indic traditions. Preliminaries As part of the Mahābhārata, the BhG belongs to that textual corpus which Mīmāṁ- sakas call smṛti, “memory” or “recollection.” Originally the term was used for rules that governed the social life of Brahmanical society, gradually morphing into the Dharma-śāstra corpus of texts, and it concerned their epistemic justifi- cation: given that they are not expressly stated in the Vedas, which are śruti or heard in daily recitation, why are they authoritative? Well, they represent the memory of Vedic texts which their authors have heard but are no longer avail- able, either because they have been lost or are recited in Vedic schools that we don’t know about. By Kumārila’s time, however, all works accepted in Vedic society were con- sidered part of the smṛti corpus, including the Mahābhārata and the Purāṇas. 1 Whatever in them concerns “invisible results” (adṛṣṭārtha), that is, future—and generally postmortem—states that are related to ritual and meditation through supersensible causal links, must originate in some Vedic text: dharma and mokṣa are in the sole province of the Vedas, and by the same token of smṛti texts which represent accurate memories of Vedic statements.2 This did not mean that everything in the Vedas about dharma and mokṣa is true at face value. The Vedas are authoritative on ritual action and Upaniṣadic medita- tion, and on whatever is required for their execution. Large parts of the Vedas— the whole saṁhitā layer of mantras and ritual formulas recited in sacrifices, and the narrative parts of the Brāhmaṇas that talk about the origins of the sacrifice, the Vedic divinities, etc.—have use or purpose, but not truth value. These are gen- erally called arthavāda, “thing-talk,” that is—not action-talk.3 To illustrate, the doctrines of idealism, momentariness, and no-self—the hallmark Buddhist teach- ings—insofar as they are found in the Upaniṣads, are for the sake of curbing the excessive attachment to sense objects.4 Likewise—and here is our first reference  A Mīmāṁsaka Reading Kṛṣṇa’s Song 199 to the BhG in Kumārila’s works—the statements that associate ritual killing with bad karma in the BhG and elsewhere are arthavādas, meant to praise meditation, not to prohibit ritual slaughter.5 The strategy of labeling statements as arthavāda is very common in Mīmāṁsā: in fact, a Mīmāṁsaka is perpetually tempted to do that with respect to all kinds of doctrines and practices that he dislikes.6 Ideas in the mantras and arthavādas, wrongly interpreted, are the origin of heterodox doctrines such as Buddhism and Jainism, and of what we today think of as Hindu but was just as wrong for early Mīmāṁsakas and Vedāntins: Sāṅkhya, Yoga, Pāśupata, Pāñcarātra. They all have a slight mixture of the Vedas in them, but that is merely a thin cloak of righteousness that conceals what they are really about: popularity, wealth, respect, fame.7 In interpreting śruti and smṛti, then, it is paramount to understand what in them is true at face value; what something is for; and not to be confused by the slight mixture of the orthodox in the heterodox. These will all be important concerns for Pārthasārathi Miśra’s reading of the BhG. As for Pārthasārathi the man, little is known about him. Ramaswami Sastri places his dates between 900 and 1100 CE. From his tittle “Miśra,” he makes the guess that he was from the North, perhaps Mithilā where the title was common, although his first name is not characteristic of the North (and would suggest, perhaps, the land of the Śrīvaiṣṇavas). He wrote four books, two commentaries on Kumārila’s works—the Tantra-ratna on the Ṭuptikā and the Nyāya-ratnākara on the Śloka-vārttika (ŚV)—and two independent works: the Nyāya-ratna-mālā and the Śāstra-dīpikā.8 The last is particularly famous, and important for us, since it is there that he engages extensively with the BhG.9 The Critique of Sāṅkhya Ontology We begin with his critique of Sāṅkhya ontology, which is situated in a larger Mīmāṁsā argument against the existence of a creator God, Īśvara, initiated by Kumārila in his ŚV.10 The argument is not an independent anti-God argument, but is one squarely set in the Mīmāṁsā doctrine that the words of the Sanskrit lan- guage are inherently (and not conventionally) referential, and that the Vedas are not a creation of any agent, human or divine: these are the two legs of the veda- apauruṣeya-vāda, the notion of the non-personal character of the Vedas. Kumārila developed this critique so as to preclude the very possibility that the Vedas might be the word of God: if there is no God to begin with, no one could establish the word-meaning relationship. And, since he is already arguing against God, why not dispose of any other potential candidate for a first principle and an origin of the Vedas? Mīmāṁsakas do not believe that the world was ever created. This helps us contextualize Pārtasārathi’s interest in Sāṅkhya.11 Sāṅkhyas think 200 Journal of Vaishnava Studies that the world is a transformation of prakṛti, prime matter, and they are of two kinds, atheists and theists, the only difference being that the theists argue that prime matter creates the world by depending on Īśvara. The defi- nition of Īśvara is taken from the Yoga-sūtra 1.24: God is a soul which is not touched by the psychological torments (kleśa), karma, its fruition, and sub- conscious predispositions. The details of the Sāṅkhya ontology, however, are derived—explicitly so—from the Mahābhārata and the Purāṇas. Prime matter is the material cause of creation. In touch with Īśvara the efficient cause, it transforms itself into the intellect (mahat-tattva), all other creative principles, and the minutiae of the world, just as the seed grows into a tree through contact with a field. Prime matter, thus, is the cause of all products, but itself is an object of enjoyment on the part of the many enjoyers, the individual souls, “the knowers of the field,” kṣetra-jña. “Such is largely the doctrine of the epics and the Purāṇas.”12 It is evident that Pārthasārati has the thirteenth chapter of the BhG as a para- digmatic theistic Sāṅkhya text in large perspective. In BhG 13.2, Kṛṣṇa calls the individual souls “knowers of the field,” kṣetra-jña. In 13.20, he presents the classi- cal Sāṅkhya teaching that prime matter is the agent in the creation of all things, whereas the individual souls are the agents of enjoyment. He refers explicitly to the BhG, however, in describing the Sāṅkhya doctrine of sat-kārya-vāda, the idea that the product is already contained in its material cause. The occasion for Pārthasārathi’s imaginary Sāṅkhya opponent to introduce the sat-karya-vāda is the charge that, according to the doctrine of cyclical creation and destruction, the good and bad karma of various individuals would be destroyed with the destruction of the universe, and the ground of individuation at new creation would be lost. The Sāṅkhya reply is that creation and destruction are not absolute events: they are merely manifestation of what is potential—the pot from clay, for instance—and occlusion of the effect into its cause: the pot in clay. The same applies to good and bad karma: in dissolution they remain in store, in potentia, but manifest in actu in creation. Which BhG verse presents this doctrine? It is 2.16: “There is no being of the non-existent, nor non-being of the truly existent.” Interestingly, Vācaspati Miśra quotes this verse in his Tattva-kaumudī on the Sāṅkhya-kārikā 9, the locus classicus of sat-kārya-vāda, and Śaṅkara interprets it in his Gītā-bhāṣya as advocating this doctrine. There is no reason to go in detail over Pārthasārathi’s refutation of Sāṅkhya: the arguments are known from Kumārila and elsewhere.13 Uniform matter can- not evolve into the pluriform world on its own. The good and bad karma of the  A Mīmāṁsaka Reading Kṛṣṇa’s Song 201 individual souls cannot be such an impetus either, because they are characteris- tics of the mind—karma is kleśa, psychological torments, and saṁskāra, subcon- scious impressions—and there is no mind before creation. Īśvara cannot create out of desire do to so, because desire is a torment, nor can creation be a result of inherent nature—either of prime matter as in Sāṅkhya or of Īśvara as in Nyāya- Vaiśeṣika—because essential creation would take place perpetually, while cre- ation and destruction are said to be cyclical. Does this mean that Pārthasārathi rejected the authority of the BhG, given that theistic Sāṅkhya “is largely the doctrine of the epics and the Purāṇas?” That surely was not the case. Already Kumārila was aware that the epics and the Purāṇas have a lot of Sāṅkhya, and yet he unequivocally affirmed their valid- ity. The theories of world creation in Sāṅkhya and Vaiśeṣika, involving first prin- ciples such as prime matter, souls, God and atoms, are, in fact, derived from the mantras and arthavāda sections of the Vedas: they are not statements with truth value, but have a purpose. This purpose is to teach causality and the relationship between a base or material and its transformation, specifically that gross objects evolve from fine seeds, and thus help the ritualist understand how the invisible potency (apūrva) that the ritual imprints on his soul can blossom into heaven in the future.14 Thus, Pārthasārathi could always interpret what he did not like as meant to teach something else, which, in fact, he did: “That prime matter is the material cause of the world has been refuted. As for the descriptions of creation and destruction in the Upaniṣads and the Purāṇas, they should be interpreted as arthavādas.”15 He did, however, explicitly reject the Sāṅkhya interpretation of 2.16. This verse is not about sat-kārya-vāda at all, but about the eternity of the soul. It comes after 2.12, where Kṛṣṇa says that neither he, nor Arjuna, nor the kings on the battlefield lacked existence in the past or would cease to exist in the future.16 It bears men- tioning that Rāmānuja had also interpreted the verse along similar lines: sat-kārya- vāda is unsuitable for the context of 2.16. Kṛṣṇa there teaches the eternity of the soul so as to remove Arjuna’s illusion evident in confusing the nature of the body and the soul. Doctrine of the Soul Pārthasārathi’s attitude towards Sāṅkhya psychology, on the other hand, was much more positive. This is understandable, given that Sāṅkhyas, like Mīmāṁsakas, sup- port the plurality of souls. The following account is part of Pārthasārathi’s presenta- tion of Sāṅkhya, not his refutation, but it is one which he, significantly, does not take up for criticism.17 202 Journal of Vaishnava Studies Since theistic Sāṅkhya is, as we saw, the teaching of the Purāṇas and the Mahābhārata, the following theological problem presents itself: how can one reconcile its doctrine of plurality of souls with the monistic teachings of the Upaniṣads? The way to go about this is to interpret Upaniṣadic monism in the sense not of numeric, but qualitative identity. Such a line of interpretation fol- lows from our linguistic practices—Mīmāṁsakas were hardcore common sense realists—where we use the word “different” for things that are dissimilar, and talk about no difference between things that are of the same shape or kind or nature: surely we do not mean that they are numerically identical. By the same token, when we think about sentient life—men, animals, etc.—and we disregard those aspects in which they differ—the characteristics of their bodies etc.—what remains common to them upon analysis does not constitute oneness, but sameness or similarity. It is such sameness that Kṛṣṇa affirms in the BhG 5.18: “Learned are those who see sameness in a Brahmin endowed with knowledge and good con- duct, a cow, an elephant, and a dog-cooker.” The same interpretation applies to scriptural statements about identity between the Lord and the liberated souls: what they affirm, in fact, is absolute similarity and the absence of dissimilarity. Liberation is the state of the soul in which it becomes absolutely similar to the Lord, but not numerically identical with him. Kṛṣṇa says as much in the BhG 14.2: “Taking recourse to this knowledge, they have attained the sameness of nature with me. They are not born at creation nor disturbed at dissolution.” The context of this verse is significant, as it follows Kṛṣṇa’s statement about that knowledge which is the best of all and leads one to the “highest accomplishment,” parāṁ siddhim. Two other verses in the BhG pres- ent the difference between the Lord and the soul, “the higher and lower person,” explicitly. The first is 15.17, where Kṛṣṇa describes the Lord, himself, as “the high- est person, different” from the perishable and the imperishable, that is, the bound and the liberated souls. The second is 13.22: “The higher soul in this body is the observer and permitter, the agent and enjoyer, the great Lord, called the supreme soul.” The rejection of monism, however, calls for some hermeneutic attention over one BhG verse which seems, prima facie, to uphold it. It is 15.7, where Kṛṣṇa describes the individual souls, jīvas, as his own parts, aṁśas, yet also eternal. What does “part” mean here? It surely cannot signify some partitive relationship of the soul with Kṛṣṇa: if that were the case, upon liberation the soul would lose its jīvatva, its being an individual soul, but would also cease being eternal. But, aṁśa in Mīmāṁsā does not really mean a part in any case: it is one of the several terms which Mīmāṁsakas use to designate an item that is subordinate to another, or  A Mīmāṁsaka Reading Kṛṣṇa’s Song 203 otherwise serves the purpose of another, the classical example being that of a servant who is for the sake of a master.18 That is how Pārthasārathi envisions a Sāṅkhya reading the verse: the individual soul is a “part” of God in the same man- ner as the servant is a “part” of the master or the ministers are “parts” of the king: they serve at his pleasure, but never cease being individual. As noted above, Pārthasārathi does not controvert any of this. Moreover, later in the text where he discusses the Mīmāṁsā doctrine of the soul, he says that the teaching of unity, literally “the doctrine of one-soul-ness,” aikyātma-vāda, should be understood as being about the absence of dissimilarity, “in the aforementioned manner.”19 The “aforementioned manner” clearly stands for his discussion in the refutation of Sāṅkhya. While Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṁsā doctrine of the soul differs in many ways from that of Sāṅkhya, to the degree that Pārthasārathi had described Sāṅkhya psychology, he has endorsed it as the true doctrine of the Upaniṣads and the BhG. The BhG provides the scriptural backing for yet another facet of Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṁsā psychology: that the individual soul is omnipresent in dimension. Kumārila had discussed this question in TV 2.1.5, and Pārthasārathi duly follows his arguments. We need not go into details, except note that Pārthasārathi refers to BhG 2.24 for evidence of the soul’s omnipresence: “It is eternal, omnipresent, fixed, immovable, and everlasting.” Kumārila had, in fact, anticipated this refer- ence. If the soul is omnipresent, then why do the Upaniṣads say it is of the size of a grain, and why does Vyāsa say in the Mahābhārata that “Yama the god of death forcefully extracted the soul of the size of a thumb” from the body? Here, too, Kumārila invokes the arthavāda strategy. These statements are not literally true: they serve a purpose. In the first case, the small size is used for the sake of presenting the extreme subtlety of the soul, which is elsewhere taught as omnipresent.20 In the second case, Vyāsa indulges in a flight of poetic fancy which is meant to show clearly the ways of the god of death. This is the bread and butter of figurative speech. “And, that same Vyāsa had described the omnipresent char- acter of the soul in many ways in the Bhagavad-gītā.”21 This is Kumārila’s second reference to Kṛṣṇa’s song. Pārthasārathi, thus, provides one direct instance of Kumārila’s “many ways.” Knowledge of the Self and Liberation For the next point, we leave the ŚD and move to the NRĀ. The focus is on the Sambandhākṣepa-parihāra, the ŚV chapter where Kumārila deals with objections against the doctrine that the word-meaning relationship is inherent, rather than conventional, and develops the aforementioned argument against the existence of God or any first principle. While arguing against prime matter—the section on 204 Journal of Vaishnava Studies which Pārthasārathi based his rebuttal of Sāṅkhya discussed above—Kumārila also picks up the question of liberation and makes the claim that knowledge of the soul is not its cause, not directly anyway: bondage is embodiment, and the direct cause of embodiment is karma. The best knowledge could do is prevent the creation of new karma by removing ignorance, but for liberation, the elimi- nation of the present karma is paramount. Knowledge of the eternal soul is what Mīmāṁsakas call kratv-artha, required for the performance of ritual insofar as the taking up of ritual which brings results in the hereafter requires belief in an eter- nal soul that survives the body.22 Elsewhere, however, in the Tantra-vārttika 1.3.29, Kumārila does affirm that knowledge of the soul can also be puruṣārtha, directly efficacious towards libera- tion. Without pursuing Kumarila’s own thinking, let us look at what Pārthasārathi made of the master’s ambivalence: it is significant for us, as it involves the BhG. The Upaniṣads teach two kinds of knowledge, jñāna. One is knowledge per se, and it concerns the distinction of the soul from the body, viveka-jñāna. It is of the kind taught by Yājñavalkya to his wife Maitreyī in the Brhad-āraṇyaka 2.4. Although our Mīmāṁsakas do no say this, it is reasonable to identify it with Kṛṣṇa’s teachings about the eternal, immortal soul at the beginning of the BhG (2.12-30). There is also meditation on the Self, upāsana, expressed in the injunctive state- ments of the Upaniṣads which say that the Self should be meditated upon. The knowledge of the soul as distinct from matter is not directly significant for libera- tion: its use is in rituals which bring about results in the hereafter. On the other hand, meditation on the soul has the power to exhaust accumulated karma, which is, as we saw, the crucial soteriological requirement. Discriminating knowledge is still necessary: one does need to know the soul as not liable to birth, death and suffering, omnipresent and different from the body. All processes that bring results in the hereafter need this understanding. But it is meditation on this soul that exhausts previous accumulated karma. And, it is this meditational knowledge which Kṛṣṇa has in mind when he says that “the fire of knowledge burns all karma to ashes” (BhG 4.37). The Mīmāṁsā process of deliverance, however, does not involve only medita- tion. The aspirant after liberation should also continue performing his obligatory actions, nitya-karma, which include the daily fire oblation, agnihotra. In Mīmāṁsā doctrine, the performance of one’s obligatory actions is for the sake of prevent- ing the sin or bad karma which would accrue in the case of non-performance of that which is enjoined in the Vedas. The attainment of liberation requires that the aspirant does not create fresh bad karma. This, however, poses the fol- lowing problem: granted no bad karma would follow through the performance  A Mīmāṁsaka Reading Kṛṣṇa’s Song 205 of one’s obligatory actions: the nature of action, nevertheless, is to produce results, and rituals are for the sake of heaven, the apogee of good karma. Ergo, performing agnihotra will bring one to heaven and liberation will remain ever elusive. Pārthasārathi retorts: such would be the case if obligatory actions are performed with the intention for heaven, not if they are performed without such intention. Evidence for this is Kṛṣṇa’s statement at the opening of the sixth chap- ter: “He who performs obligatory actions without intending their results is a true renouncer, a yogi, not the one who does not light up the sacrificial fire and abstains from action.”23 Pārthasārathi does not say how the meditation on the Self should look like or what he precisely means by it, but from the context of 4.37 and 6.1, the key soteri- ological texts, and his doctrine of sameness of souls, it is perhaps the meditational yoga described in the Sixth Chapter of the Gītā. In 4.35, Kṛṣṇa tells Arjuna that knowledge—no doubt the same knowledge he will praise in 4.37—will make him see all beings first in himself and then in Kṛṣṇa. This essentially is the message of Chapter Six and verses 29 and 30: “He who is engaged in yoga and sees equality everywhere, sees himself in all beings and all beings in himself. He who sees me everywhere and sees everything in me, I am not lost to him, nor is he lost to me.” There are, of course, statements in the Sixth Chapter that would be problematic for a Mīmāṁsaka, but nothing is really an issue for a skilled commentator and a thinker of Pārthasārathi’s caliber. The Notion of “I” Our final case of Pārthasārathi’s engagement with the BhG is one meant for set- tling some intra-Mīmāṁsā scores.24 It concerns Prabhākara’s doctrine of sākṣāt- pratīti or direct apprehension, also known as tripuṭī-pratyakṣa, the threefold character of perception, and its consequences for Mīmāṁsā psychology. Very briefly, the doctrine says that in any cognitive act, three elements are directly, perceptually, revealed: the object; the cognizing subject; and the cognition itself. Significant with relation to the cognizing subject is that it is revealed as a subject, not an object, which is why there is no self-awareness without object-awareness. To illustrate, although the soul persists in deep sleep, the absence of objective awareness just means that one cannot be aware of oneself either. Self-awareness requires the intentionality of consciousness, but when cognition does take place, it is self-luminous and eo ipso it reveals the subject and the object. Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṁsā disagrees with this: a cognitive act directly reveals only the object, say a pot; that I have a cognition of the pot is not self-luminous, but is known only upon reflection, as a second order awareness: when I consider that 206 Journal of Vaishnava Studies the object possesses the characteristic of being known to me, I can infer that a cognition must have occurred. Likewise, the subject, the soul: that the soul is the agent, cognizing and otherwise, is inferred from its states‚ such as breathing, pleasure, pain, effort, cognitions, which are not coterminous with the body because they disappear at death whereas shape, color and the like—the proper characteristics of the body—do not. The soul is not known directly, perceptually, as indispensably present in object-awareness, but only through its states. To know something is to know it as an object, and the knowing subject can only be objectivized through its states.25 Most specifically, the soul is known from the notion or recognitive aware- ness of “I,” which persists through all cognitive acts and serves as the unfailing inferential mark for the eternal soul, as well as the notion of “mine” when we talk about “my body,” understanding, thus, that the body is different from the soul.26 At the end of his Bṛhatī on Śabara’s Bhāṣya on the Mīmāṁsā-Sūtra 1.1.5, the key text for Mīmāṁsā psychology, Prabhākara wonders why the venerable com- mentator did not take up the following doctrine for elaboration: “The notions of ‘I’ and ‘mine’ are erroneous conceptions of self with respect to that which is not the self.” What he has in mind, obviously, is this second order of objectivized “I” and “mine” which Kumārila took as inferential marks for the soul, being its states, but which he himself does not need, as he believes that the soul is known directly when it knows objects. The commentator did not elaborate on this, says Prabhākara, because going into such details does not fit the context, which is knowledge of the eternal soul insofar as it is required for the performance of ritual on the part of those who are attached to action. The understanding of the true nature of the soul, improp- erly objectivized through the mental states of “I” and “mine,” is pertinent only for those whose psychological faults have been removed, the liberationists, not those who are attached to action. In fact, “the blessed Dvaipāyana says in the esoteric section: ‘One should not disrupt the understanding of the ignorant who are attached to action.’ It is out of deference to this statement that the venerable commentator did not elaborate on the doctrine, not out of ignorance.” This is how Prabhākara calls the BhG in the only reference to it in his Bṛhatī: “the esoteric section” or “topic,” rahasyādhikāra.27 But Kumārila and Pārthasārathi won’t have this: in fact, the sense of self, of “I,” never ceases, even on the part of yogis: even yogis have the notion of “I” when they meditate on the soul, “for no idea other than ‘I’ is possible with respect to the self.”28 And, if they do not understand the soul, if they cannot objectivize it, how could they teach students, which they evidently do? Here Pārthasārathi quotes profuse-  A Mīmāṁsaka Reading Kṛṣṇa’s Song 207 ly from the BhG to show that even the venerable Vāsudeva, “the master of yogis” as he calls him, preserves a sense of self and engagement in teaching Arjuna: “I am the origin and the destruction of the whole world” (7.6); “I know all of them [my births,] while you do not, destroyer of foes” (4.5); “Since I am higher that the per- ishable, and above the imperishable as well” (15.18); “With a single part, I go on supporting the whole world” (10.42); “My womb is the great Brahman, in which I place the seed.” All these cases of the notion of “I” must refer to a true sense of self that Kṛṣṇa maintains, says Pārthasārathi, because they cannot be explained as that sense of self which is a transformation of the intellect, the intellect being posterior to the joining of spirit and matter that Kṛṣṇa talks about. This last comment is surely not an endorsement of Sāṅkhya ontology. Pārtha- sārathi’s answer concerns the possibility of the sense of self being mistakenly attrib- uted to the soul, as it is to the body. It is, of course, Sāṅkhya-Yoga who talk like that, and Prabhākara’s statement of the doctrine that the commentator did not elabo- rate—“the notions of ‘I’ and ‘mine’ are erroneous conceptions of self with respect to that which is not the self”—smacks of Sāṅkhya. Assuming for the sake of argument that their doctrine is correct, it would still not follow that Kṛṣṇa’s sense of self is false, as it would have to be posterior to the creation of the world. But, Pārthasārathi need not reject Kṛṣṇa’s statements, for the sense of self, being a cognition, resides in the soul as its substance, not in the intellect as in Sāṅkhya. The statements of world creation he can always interpret as arthavāda, as we saw above. Kṛṣṇa and Pārthasārathi It is appropriate to close this paper with the following question: given his com- mitment to Kumārila’s critique of a God creator and any other first principle, as well as his engagement with the BhG, how did Pārthasārathi view Kṛṣṇa’s place in the grand scheme of things? This is perhaps all the more pertinent in view of the beautiful maṅgalācaraṇa with which he opens the ŚD: “Joyfully I salute Mukunda, on whose chest are Lakṣmī and the Kaustubha jewel, who is the enemy of Mura, who wields the conch, the sword and the club, whose eyes are red like lotus pet- als, who wears a yellow garment and bears the bow, who is dark as the monsoon cloud and has four broad and thick arms, the one above prime matter, who has the Śrīvatsa mark and is the master of those of don’t have a master.”29 His Nyāya- ratna-mālā likewise opens with a maṅgalācaraṇa to Kṛṣṇa, one, however, much more Upaniṣadic than devotional. It is quite possible, of course, that Pārthasārathi was not unlike the other great Miśra, Vācaspati, one thing at home but another at work; that is, a Vaiṣṇava who 208 Journal of Vaishnava Studies happens to be a professor of Kumārila’s system. There is, I think, another pos- sibility, revealed in the conclusion to his refutation of the Vaiśeṣika doctrine of creation, where Īśvara is the efficient and the atoms the material cause of the world. There Pārthasārathi says that, if one accepts the doctrine of apauruṣeya- vāda—which Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika doesn’t—“then on the strength of the authority of the Vedas even Īśvara’s will and prowess, as also creation and dissolution, might be established, on the analogy of the return of seasons, or they might not. On the other hand, to those who pay no regard to the Vedas and who proceed to apply to supersensible things inferential reasoning … indifference is the only answer.”30 Even Kumārila, we may add, claimed that the various manvantaras, periods of reign of different Manus, are like the change of the seasons. Kumārila needed this in order to secure the authority of Manu through the claim that his name is men- tioned in the Vedas but cannot he a historical reference because this would make the Vedas historical as well.31 So, there may be an Īśvara, after all, just not one knowable by inference, and not one who establishes the word-meaning relationship and writes the Vedas, such that the refutation of God is merely an affirmation of the eternity of the Vedas. Even without creation and dissolution of the Sāṅkhya kind, it is still very likely that Pārthasārathi believed in an Īśvara of some kind. It may also be instructive to pay little attention to the final passage that we discussed. While Pārthasārathi generally calls Kṛṣṇa “the venerable Vāsudeva” (bhagavān vāsudeva), in affirming that even he has a sense of Self he calls him “the master of yogis” and introduces the several quotes from the BhG with the following verse: “Those Lords of the masters of yoga who have reached the highest summit of yoga, they too have the notion of ‘I’.”32 Given that he never repudiates the Yoga-sūtra definition of Īśvara but only the Sāṅkhya claim that Īśvara is the efficient cause of the world; that he frequently repeats how the highest person shares qualitative sameness with all other souls in the context of several verses from the BhG; and that meditational knowledge in which one sees oneself as qualitatively identical with all beings and with Kṛṣṇa is “for the good of man,” liberation; might one hazard the guess that Kṛṣṇa for him was kind of what Īśvara is for yogis, a special kind of soul never tainted by karma, never in bondage, but the teacher of those who are? Conclusion The few places where Kumārila and Prabhākara cite the BhG, three in total, treat the Gītā as Vyāsa’s work and do not mention Kṛṣṇa at all. They are, neverthe- less, significant as a relatively early testimony of the increasing popularity of the  A Mīmāṁsaka Reading Kṛṣṇa’s Song 209 text as distinct from the bulk of the Mahābhārata, Kumārila calling it “Gītā” and Prabhākara “the esoteric section,” rahasyādhikāra. For Pārthasārathi, on the other hand, Kṛṣṇa wields great scriptural authority, whatever his personal relationship with the eponymous god—Pārthasārathi— may have been. What stands out is that Kṛṣṇa’s song is an Upaniṣad-like text: the quotes from the Gītā generally follow quotes from the Upaniṣads, and it evi- dently serves the same purpose. What is that purpose? To provide knowledge of the eternal soul, which is required for engagement in any ritual undertaking that brings about results in the hereafter, and to teach meditation on the self and the performance of karma-yoga, disinterested action, for those who are after liberation. Beyond that, its Sāṅkhya ontology and cosmology are of the arthavāda kind, not to be read literally. And, no matter the name which epitomizes Kṛṣṇa’s characteristic of saulabhya, accessibility—Pārthasārathi, who lowered himself to the position of Arjuna’s charioteer—of bhakti, surrender and such we don’t hear a word. Finally, Pārthasārathi’s reading of the BhG, it should be obvious, was not formative for his views: each and every position he argued—about the faults of Sāṅkhya, the qualitative sameness and omnipresence of the individual souls, about the sense of self as a mark of the eternal soul, about two kinds of knowl- edge—he took from Kumārila either directly or through entailment. The BhG, while incomparably more important to him than to any prior Mīmāṁsaka, was, all things considered, simply corroborative. That said, Pārthasārathi’s reading shows that every traditional Hindu system of thought, including the non-theistic Mīmāṁsā, could justifiably find support in that most catholic of Vaiṣṇava books for the intricacies of its soteriology. Endnotes 1. See Tantra-vārttika (TV) 1.3.1-7. Also, Olivelle 2018; McCrea 2010. 2. TV 1.3.2, I.267. References are according to Gosvami 1984-1987, with page numbers preceded by volume number. 3. TV 1.3.2, I.269. 4. Ibid. 5. ŚV on codanā-sūtra, 275a-276b, NRĀ thereon, p.93. All references to ŚV and NRĀ are from Rai 1993. 6. The classification of kinds of Vedic text is the topic of section 1.2 of Mīmāṁsā-sūtra and the commentaries. 7. TV 1.3.4, I.328. 8. See Sastri 1937:xi-xx. 210 Journal of Vaishnava Studies 9. On the ŚD and its relationship with the NRĀ, see Sastri 1937:xii-xiv. The Tarka-pāda section of the ŚD has been competently translated by Venkatramiah (1940). 10. ŚV, Sambandhākṣepa-parihāra chapter; see Bilimoria 1990. 11. ŚD pp.320-27. All references are to Dravid 1916. 12. ŚD pp.320. 13. See Vattanky 1993 for general introduction. 14. TV 1.3.2, I.269. 15. ŚD pp.327. 16. ŚD pp.325. 17. ŚD pp.321-23. 18. The discussion on this in Mīmāṁsā-sūtra is in 3.1.2 and the commentaries. 19. ŚD p.355. 20. Pārthasārathi follows Kumārila in this as well; see ŚD p.354. 21. TV 2.1.5, II.355. 22. ŚV, Sambandhākṣepa-parihāra, verses 94-113. Kumārila’s doctrine of liberation has been discussed in several places; a good place to start is Taber 2007. On Pārthasārathi’s interpretation, see Ram-Prasad 2007:133-46. 23. NRĀ on ŚV Sambandhāksepa-parihāra, verses 102-111. 24. ŚD pp.346-51. 25. On this, see Bhatt 1962:48-66. 26. See Taber 1990. 27. Bṛhatī on MS 1.1.5, p.256. 28. ŚV, ātma-vāda 133cd-134; NRĀ thereon. 29. ŚD p.3. 30. ŚD p.331-32. 31. ŚD p.349-50. 32. 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