Jaimini

Sage Jaimini was an ancient Indian scholar who founded the Mīmāṃsā school of Hindu philosophy. He is considered to be a disciple of Rishi/Sage Veda Vyasa, the son of Parāśara Rishi. Traditionally attributed to be the author of the Mimamsa Sutras and Jaimini Sutras, he is estimated to have lived around 4th to 2nd century BCE. Some scholars place him between 250 BCE and 50 CE. His school is considered non-theistic, but one that emphasized rituals parts of the Vedas as essential to Dharma. Jaimini is known for his studies of the older Vedic rituals. Jaimini's guru was Badarayana, the latter founded the Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy, emphasizing the knowledge parts of the Vedas, and credited with authoring Brahma Sutras. Both Badarayana and Jaimini quoted each other as they analyzed each other's theories, Badarayana emphasizing knowledge while Jaimini emphasizes rituals, sometimes agreeing with each other, sometimes disagreeing, often anti-thesis of the other. Jaimini's contributions to textual analysis and exegesis influenced other schools of Indian philosophies, and the most studied bhashya (reviews and commentaries) on Jaimini's texts were by scholars named Shabara, Kumarila and Prabhakara. Jaimini is most known for his great treatise Purva Mimamsa Sutras, also called Karma-mimamsa (“Study of Ritual Action”), a system that investigates the rituals in the Vedic texts. The text founded the Purva-Mimamsa school of Ancient Indian philosophy, one of the six Darsanas or schools of Ancient Indian philosophy. Dated to ca. the 4th century BCE, the text contains about 3,000 sutras and is the foundational text of the Mimamsa school. The text aims at an exegesis of the Vedas with regard to ritual practice (karma) and religious duty (dharma), commenting on the early Upanishads. Jaimini's Mimamsa is a ritualist (karma-kanda) counter-movement to the Self-knowledge (Atman) speculations of the Vedanta philosophy. His Mimamsa Sutra was commented upon by many, of which Śābara was among the earliest.