Kumarila Bhatta
| Kumārila Bhaṭṭa | |
|---|---|
| Born | est. 700 AD Mithila India |
| Died | Assam, India |
Kumārila Bhaṭṭa (fl. roughly 700) was a Hindu philosopher and Mīmāṃsā scholar from kalinga. He is famous for many of his various theses on Mimamsa, such as Mimamsaslokavarttika. Bhaṭṭa was a staunch believer in the supreme validity of Vedic injunction, a great champion of Pūrva-Mīmāṃsā and a confirmed ritualist. The Varttika is mainly written as a subcommentary of Sabara's commentary on Jaimini's Purva Mimamsa Sutras. His philosophy is classified by some scholars as existential realism.
Scholars differ as regards Kumārila Bhaṭṭa's views on a personal God. For example, Manikka Vachakar believed that Bhaṭṭa promoted a personal God (saguna brahman), which conflicts with the Mīmāṃsā school. In his Varttika, Kumārila Bhaṭṭa goes to great lengths to argue against the theory of a creator God and held that the actions enjoined in the Veda had definite results without an external interference.
Bhaṭṭa is also credited with the logical formulation of the Mimamsic belief that the Vedas are unauthored (apauruṣeyā). In particular his defence against medieval Buddhist positions on Vedic rituals is noteworthy. Some believe that this contributed to the decline of Buddhism in India because his lifetime coincides with the period in which Buddhism began to decline. Indeed, his dialectical success against Buddhists is confirmed by Buddhist historian Taranatha, who reports that Bhaṭṭa defeated disciples of Buddhapalkita, Bhavya, Dharmadasa, Dignaga and others. 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.
Kumārila Bhaṭṭa and his followers in the Mīmāṃsā tradition known as Bhāṭṭas argued for a strongly Compositional view of semantics (called abhihitānvaya). In this view, the meaning of a sentence was understood only after understanding first the meanings of individual words. Words were independent, complete objects, a view that is close to the Fodorian view of language. He also used several Tamil words in his poems, including one of the earliest mention of the name Dravida in North Indian sources.
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