Kumarila Bhatta (IAST: KumÃÂrila Bhaá¹Âá¹Âa; fl. roughly 7th century CE) was a Hindu philosopher and a scholar of Mimamsa school of philosophy from early medieval India. We wrote three subcommentaries on Sabara's commentary on Jaimini's Purva Mimamsa Sutras, namely the à ÂlokavÃÂrttika, Tantravarttika and Tuptika. Bhaá¹Âá¹Âa was a staunch believer in the supreme validity of Vedic injunction, a champion of Pà «rva-MëmÃÂá¹Âsàand a confirmed ritualist. His philosophy is classified by some scholars as existential realism.
KumÃÂrila is also credited with the logical formulation of the Mimamsic belief that the Vedas are unauthored (apauruá¹£eyÃÂ). In particular, he is known for his defense of Vedic ritualism against medieval Buddhist idealism. His work strongly influenced other schools of Indian philosophy, with the exception that while Mimamsa considers the Upanishads to be subservient to the Vedas, the Vedanta school does not think so.
The birthplace of KumÃÂrila Bhatta is uncertain. According to the 16th-century Buddhist scholar Taranatha, KumÃÂrila was a native of South India. However, Anandagiri's Shankara-Vijaya states that Kumarila came from "the North" (udagdeà ÂÃÂt), and debated the Buddhists and the Jains in the South.
Another theory is that he came from eastern India, specifically Kamarupa (present-day Assam). Sesa's Sarvasiddhanta-rahasya uses the eastern title Bhattacharya for him. His writings indicate that he was familiar with the production of silk, which was common in present-day Assam. Yet another theory is that he comes from Mithila, which has similar culture to Assam, and produced another scholar on the subject Mandana Misra. According to legend in Mithila, the Kumarila Bhatta Dih at Bhatsimar or Bhatpura in the Mithila region is believed to be the birthplace of Kumarila Bhatta.
KumÃÂrila Bhaá¹Âá¹Âa and his followers in the MëmÃÂá¹Âsàtradition known as ' argued for a strongly Compositional view of semantics called abhihitÃÂnvaya or "designation of what has been denoted." In this view, the meaning of a sentence was understood only after understanding first the meanings of individual words. Word referents were independent, complete objects, a view that is close to the Fodorian view of language, according to philosopher Daniel Arnold. He also used several Tamil words in his works, including one of the earliest mention of the name Dravida in North Indian sources, found in his TantravÃÂrttika.
The above-mentioned view of sentence meaning was debated over some seven or eight centuries by the followers of the PrabhÃÂkara school within MëmÃÂá¹ÂsÃÂ, who argued that words do not directly designate meaning. Rather, word meanings are understood as already connected with other words (anvitÃÂbhidhÃÂna, anvita = connected; abhidhÃÂna = denotation). This view was influenced by the holistic arguments of Bhartá¹Âhari's theory. Essentially the PrÃÂbhÃÂkaras argued that sentence meanings are grasped directly, from perceptual and contextual cues, skipping the stage of grasping singly the individual word meanings, similar to the modern view of linguistic underspecification, which relates to the dynamic turn in semantics, that also opposes purely compositional approaches to sentence meaning.
KumÃÂrila's advocates for the doctrine of intrinsic validity, also known as svatah pramanya. In this view, all cognitions are valid at the moment of apprehension unless and until proved otherwise. John Taber argues that this is distinct from coherence theories of truth.
In his text Slokavarttika, KumÃÂrila Bhatta argues that cognitions are intrinsically valid (svatah pramanya): KumÃÂrila argues against the need for second-order justification before accepting cognitions as valid.
Whilst taking an ÃÂstika position, that is, a position in which the supremacy of the Veda is upheld, KumÃÂrila, in line with the Mimamsa tradition, rejects the notion of a supreme deity or God. Within his commentaries, KumÃÂrila provides various kinds of arguments to reject the notion of a God. One such argument is his skepticism towards a cosmological argument in favour of a divine transcendent creator. In his Slokavarttika, KumÃÂrila argues that it is implausible to accept both that the world had a divine creator and that the world had any kind of 'beginning' to begin with. Following from this KumÃÂrila considers two options, either the deity that created the world has a created body or an uncreated body. If the deity has a created body then there would be an infinite regress, since we would then need to ask, who created the body of the creator? If the deity has an uncreated body, a body that has always existed, why can we not say the same for our own?
KumÃÂrila Bhaá¹Âá¹Âa is known for his defense of Vedic ritualism against medieval Buddhist idealism. With the aim to prove the superiority of Vedic scripture, KumÃÂrila Bhaá¹Âá¹Âa presented several novel arguments:
1. Buddhist texts were written in vernacular and not Sanskrit. Sheldon Pollock demonstrates that one of the ways that KumÃÂrila rejects the validity of Buddhist texts is by critiquing the language through which it is transmitted. He specifically takes the Buddhist verse: 'ime samkhada dhamma sambhavanti sakarana akarana vinassanti' (These phenomena arise when the cause is present and perish when the cause is absent). Thus he presents his argument:
Pollock, however, notes that this argument reveals that KumÃÂrila was ignorant of the Buddhist texts written in Sanskrit that were already available during his time.
2. Every extant school held some scripture to be correct. To show that the Veda was the only correct scripture, KumÃÂrila said that "the absence of an author would safeguard the Veda against all reproach" (apaurusheya). There was "no way to prove any of the contents of Buddhist scriptures directly as wrong in spirit...", unless one challenges the legitimacy and eternal nature of the scripture itself. It is well known that the Pali Canon was composed after the Buddha's parinirvana. Further, even if they were the Buddha's words, they were not eternal or unauthored like the Vedas.
3. The Sautrantika Buddhist school believed that the universe was momentary (kshanika). KumÃÂrila said that this was absurd, given that the universe does not disappear every moment. No matter how small one would define the duration of a moment, one could divide the moment into infinitely further parts. KumÃÂrila argues: "if the universe does not exist between moments, then in which of these moments does it exist?" Because a moment could be infinitesimally small, Bhaá¹Âá¹Âa argued that the Buddhist was claiming that the universe was non-existent.
4. The Determination of perception (pratyaksha pariccheda).
According to Buton Rinchen Drub, KumÃÂrila spoke abusively towards his nephew, Dharmakërti, as he was taking his brahminical garments. This drove Dharmakërti away, and resolving to vanquish all non-Buddhist heretics he took the robes of the Buddhist order instead.
John Taber, through an analysis of KumÃÂrila's arguments in the à ÂlokavÃÂrttika, argues that KumÃÂrila could not have been engaging with Dharmakirti since his portrayal of Buddhist arguments is less sophisticated than what Dharmakirti argued. KumÃÂrila has in mind a Buddhist opponent whose arguments are more sophisticated than Dignaga's but less sophisticated than Dharmakirti. This analysis challenges the idea that KumÃÂrila was acquainted with Dharmakirti and his works.
According to legend, KumÃÂrila went to study Buddhism at Nalanda (the largest 4th-century university in the world), with the aim of refuting Buddhist doctrine in favour of Vedic religion. He was expelled from the university when he protested against his teacher (Dharmakirti) ridiculing the Vedic rituals. Legend has it that even though he was thrown off of the university's tower, he survived with an eye injury by claiming "if the Vedas are the ultimate then I will be spared from Death."
The Madhaviya Sankara Digvijayam, a 14th-century hagiographic work on the life of Sankara, claims that Sankara challenged Bhaá¹Âá¹Âa to a debate on his deathbed. KumÃÂrila Bhaá¹Âá¹Âa could not debate Sankara as he was punishing himself to have disrespected his Buddhist teacher by defeating him in a debate using the Vedas by self-immolation at the banks of Ganga at Prayagraj and instead directed him to argue with his student Mandana Misra in Mahiá¹£mati. He said: Kumarila's importance in the history of Indian philosophy comes to light in view of how his work has been extensively quoted.