Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction (dharmaśāstra)
- 1 Sources and theologies (pramāṇa)
- 2 Hermeneutics and ethics (mīmāṃsā)
- 3 Debt and meaning (ṛṇa)
- 4 Persons and things (svatva)
- 5 Doubts and disputes (vyavahāra)
- 6 Rectitude and rehabilitation (daṇḍa)
- 7 Law and practice (ācāra)
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Hermeneutics and ethics (mīmāṃsā)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction (dharmaśāstra)
- 1 Sources and theologies (pramāṇa)
- 2 Hermeneutics and ethics (mīmāṃsā)
- 3 Debt and meaning (ṛṇa)
- 4 Persons and things (svatva)
- 5 Doubts and disputes (vyavahāra)
- 6 Rectitude and rehabilitation (daṇḍa)
- 7 Law and practice (ācāra)
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The word mīmāṃsā means the “desire to think,” or more colloquially, “how to think through or interpret things.” Most of the time, it refers specifically to a philosophical and hermeneutic tradition of classical India, in which case it indicates Mīmāṃsā texts and ideas. Mīmāṃsā is distinct from Dharmaśāstra, but it – along with grammar, the “queen” of traditional Indic scholarship – is also foundational for a full understanding of the latter because of the legal hermeneutics it supplies. Beyond technical rules for the proper interpretation of texts, however, Mīmāṃsā expresses a theology that displaces the individual from the center of religious concern. Personal soteriology is an afterthought in both Mīmāṃsā and Hindu law; discussions of personal salvation are either subordinate or accretively attached to the central focus of Mīmāṃsā in a larger system of meaning, namely the sacrificial ritual of the Vedas. In the Hindu law tradition, however, the authors of Dharmaśāstra shifted the focus from sacrifice to the system of classes and life-stages called varṇāśramadharma. In other words, Hindu jurisprudence reformulated the Mīmāṃsā theology by staking a claim that what is good for the individual must be “de-centered” in favor of what is good for the social system of castes and life-stages.
Compelling recent arguments suggest that dharma was made a central and contested theological category in South Asian religious history only after the time of the Mauryan king Aśoka (third century BC).
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- Information
- The Spirit of Hindu Law , pp. 47 - 69Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010