Mīmāṃsā rules
from 200 BCE Jaimini's Mīmāṃsā Sūtra; still cited in Indian courts
A formal system of rules for settling what an authoritative text actually requires, worked out for scripture and used ever since for statutes.
- Active
- from 200 BCE
- Where
- North India
- Also
- mīmāṃsā
- Status
- In use
- Tradition
- Non-Western procedures
What it is
Mīmāṃsā is the discipline of working out what a text enjoins. It begins from the problem that a body of authoritative text contains commands, descriptions, praise and apparent contradictions, and that acting on it requires knowing which is which.
The answer is a set of ranked interpretive rules. Direct statement outranks implication, which outranks context, which outranks the name of a section. Where two provisions conflict, the more specific governs the general in its own area and the general holds elsewhere. Descriptive passages attached to commands are treated as commendation rather than as further requirements.
How it works
Determine whether the passage is an injunction or something else — description, praise, or a restatement. Establish its purport by the ranked means, taking direct statement over anything weaker. Where provisions conflict, apply the specific to its own case and the general to the rest. Where a provision is silent, apply the general rule rather than inventing a special one.
The ranking is the whole apparatus. Without it, any text long enough will support any conclusion.
The moves, in order
- Determine whether the passage commands or merely describes
- Establish its purport by the ranked means, direct statement first
- Where provisions conflict, let the specific govern its own case
- Where the text is silent, apply the general rule
- Do not treat commendation as a further requirement
The procedure
Proposition The deed does not require the trustees to hold the land.
- The deed says at clause 4 that the trustees shall hold the property for the benefit of the members, and at clause 11 that the trustees may sell any asset with the consent of a general meeting.
- Clause 4 is an injunction; the recital that the founder wished the land to remain in the family forever is a recital, and describing the founder's wishes is not commanding anything.
- By the ranking, the direct statement of clause 11 outranks the implication some members draw from the recital.
- Clause 11 is the specific provision — it deals expressly with disposal — and clause 4 is the general statement of the trustees' duty, so clause 11 governs disposal and clause 4 governs everything else.
- The deed is silent on whether land in particular may be sold, so the general power in clause 11 applies to it rather than a special restriction being read in.
Therefore The trustees may sell the land with a general meeting's consent, and the recital about the founder's wishes commends a course of action without requiring it.
Every rule used here has a Mīmāṃsā name and every one of them is also a canon of statutory construction in the common law. The two traditions built the same apparatus from the same problem without contact.
What it is good for
Reading any authoritative text that has to be acted on — statutes, deeds, standards, constitutions. It is the most developed body of interpretive rules produced anywhere before the modern law of construction.
Where it fails
The rules assume the text is coherent and has a single purport. Where a document is genuinely the product of compromise and contains provisions that were never meant to fit, the apparatus will manufacture a coherence that was not there, and it has no way to report that instead.
And the rules themselves have to be ordered, which requires judgement the system does not supply. Two competent interpreters can apply the same ranked means to the same passage and disagree about which means is engaged — a difficulty the tradition met by producing further rules, and then rules for those.
Common misconceptions
That it is theology. Mīmāṃsā is remarkably uninterested in God — it is concerned with what the text requires be done, and its most famous school holds the Veda to be authorless, which removes the question of an author's intention entirely.
Where it came from
Jaimini's Mīmāṃsā Sūtra, systematised by Śabara and then by Kumārila and Prabhākara in the seventh century, whose disagreement organises the field thereafter.
What became of it
Still taught, and still cited: Indian courts have invoked Mīmāṃsā principles of interpretation in decided cases, which makes it one of very few ancient philosophical methods with current legal authority.
Lasting influence
It supplied classical India with its theory of interpretation for law as well as for ritual, and its categories are still used in Sanskrit scholarship.
Why it still matters
Live in Indian jurisprudence and directly parallel to common law construction everywhere else.
Put another way
A rulebook for reading rulebooks.
Texts
Jaimini, Mīmāṃsā Sūtra
The founding text, unreadable without Śabara's commentary, which is where the interpretive apparatus is actually worked out.
Where to start
Compare the six means of determining purport with the common law canons of construction. The correspondence is close enough to be unsettling.
The surprising bit
A system built to settle which Vedic sacrifices are actually obligatory is cited by the Supreme Court of India in matters of statutory construction.
In their own words
That which serves the purpose of the injunction is the purport
Who held it
Śabara
Connections
- Relies on
- Śabda
- Parallel to
- The hermeneutic circle
The verdict
The most developed pre-modern theory of interpretation anywhere, and it cannot tell a coherent text from one it has made coherent.