Mimamsa Sutras

The founding text of the Purva
Mimamsa school, one of the six schools
of traditional Hindu philosophy. The
Mimamsa Sutras are traditionally
attributed to the sage Jaimini, who is
believed to have lived in the fourth
century B.C.E. The Mimamsa school
was most concerned with the investigation of dharma (“righteous action”),
believed to be revealed in the Vedas,
the earliest Hindu religious texts.
Much of Mimamsa thought is concerned with principles and methods
for textual interpretation, to discover
and interpret the instructions contained
in the Vedas. The Mimamsa Sutras
were elaborated in numerous commentaries, the most famous of which
were written by Kumarila and
Prabhakara in the seventh century.
For further information and text, see
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Charles
A. Moore (eds.), A Sourcebook in Indian
Philosophy, 1957.