Sacred Texts´ Epistemology in Venkatanatha´s Sesvaramimamsa

The project focuses on Venkatanatha`s Sesvaramimamsa. Venkatanatha (also known as Vedanta Desika) lived in Southern India, and his traditional dates are 1269-1370. He was a polygraph and wrote in different genres and different literary languages. He is possibly the foremost theologian and philosopher of the influential school of Visistadvaita Vedanta and surely its major systematiser. During this systematisation, Venkatanatha deals with the works and thought of the mystic current of the Tamil alvars. Interestingly, at the same time he strives to engage in an ongoing debate with the orthodox Sanskrit philosophy, especially with the Nyaya and Mimamsa schools. The Sesvaramimamsa is a commentary on the basic text of the Mimamsa school of philosophy, namely the Mimamsasutra, which Venkatanatha re-interprets in a theistic way. The Sesvaramimamsa occupies a specific position in Venkatanatha`s production, insofar as in it Venkatanatha explicitly engages with the orthodox tradition of Mimamsa, which represents the major authority in classical Indian thought as for the exegesis and the epistemology of the Sacred Texts (the Vedas). The Sesvaramimamsa represents at the same time Venkatanatha`s essay of making Visistadvaita Vedanta compatible with the Mimamsa exegesis of Vedic orthodoxy, and also of showing how such Vedic exegesis would be useful and should be welcomed by Vaisnavas. Of particular relevance is the way Venkatanatha uses Mimamsa arguments for the validity of the Vedas in order to justify also the validity of the Vaisnava Sacred Texts (the Pancaratras). The present project focuses on the first of the two books of the Sesvaramimamsa, since this is the more epistemologically relevant. Its main output is a monographic study of the epistemology of the Sacred Texts presented in the Sesvaramimamsa and of the role it accomplishes in Vedanta Desika`s agenda. During the project, a recensio of the available manuscripts and editions will be completed and the manuscripts will be collated at crucial passages in order to establish whether the published text is reliable enough. Further, a working translation of Sesvaramimamsa book 1 will be produced and two articles on specific topics dealt with in the Sesvaramimamsa (the ethics of killing and intellectual intuition) will be finished.

The project focused on Venkatanatha's Sesvaramimamsa, book 1, of which it produced a working translation, and about which several articles have been written during the project, focusing on free will and on nature in Ve?ka?an?tha, on his relation to his predecessors, and on his reuse of Buddhist ideas.Venkatanatha (also known as Vedanta Desika) lived in Southern India, and his traditional dates are 1269-1370. He was a polygraph and wrote in different genres and different literary languages. He is possibly the foremost theologian and philosopher of the influential school of Visistadvaita Vedanta and surely its major systematiser. During this systematisation, Venkatanatha dealt with the works and thought of the mystic current of the Tamil alvars. Interestingly, at the same time he strived to engage in an ongoing debate with the orthodox Sanskrit philosophy, especially with the Nyaya and Mimamsa schools. The Sesvaramimamsa is a commentary on the basic text of the Mimamsa school of philosophy, namely the Mimamsasutra, which Venkatanatha re-interpreted in a theistic way. The Sesvaramimamsa occupies a specific position in Venkatanatha's production, insofar as in it Venkatanatha explicitly engaged with the orthodox tradition of Mimamsa, which represents the major authority in classical Indian thought as for the exegesis and the epistemology of the Sacred Texts (the Vedas). The Sesvaramimamsa represents at the same time Venkatanatha's essay of making Visistadvaita Vedanta compatible with the Mimamsa exegesis of Vedic orthodoxy, and also of showing how such Vedic exegesis would be useful and should be welcomed by Vaisnavas. Of particular relevance is the way Venkatanatha uses Mimamsa arguments for the validity of the Vedas in order to justify also the validity of the Vaisnava Sacred Texts (the Pancaratras).