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Again on ahampratyaya in Kumārila (using Watson 2010 and 2020)

My previous post on Kumārila’s cognition of the I (here: https://elisafreschi.com/2026/02/15/does-kumarila-accept-i-cognition-as-a-kind-of-perception/) was part of an ongoing conversation with Alex Watson, who patiently prompted me to read or re-read (respectively) his 2010 (“Bhaṭṭa Rāmakaṇṭha’s Elaboration of Self-Awareness (svasaṃvedana)…”) and 2020 (“Four Mīmāṃsā views concerning the self”) articles. They make many very important points and put together most of the sources we need, besides being thorough in reconstructing the arguments and their history. Reading the articles made me think about a few more points:

Re. the nature of ahampratyaya: It is clear that scholars after Kumārila have been having the same debates we are having and have concluded that ahampratyaya must be a form of mānasapratyakṣa. They are much more explicit than Kumārila about it, which seems to show that they sensed the problem and addressed it.

In the 2010 article (the one on Rāmakaṇṭha), Watson wonders whether the ahampratyayas of everyone among us would be the same. He mentions (and excludes) the cases of “I am thin”, which Kumārila explicitly refutes. I think that Kumārila favours a “thick” view of the subject, so that ahampratyayas would be distinguishable, even though not through the characteristics of the bodies attached to them.

In the same article Watson also repeats that in ahampratyaya the self figures as the object, quoting sources later than Kumārila (see below on why this is relevant). 

In the 2020 article (Four views…) Watson imagines ahampratyaya to work like the Naiyāyika anuvyavasāya, namely as a temporally subsequent moment, e.g.:
I know a pot—>I know that *I* knew a pot (=>I know that I must have *known* the pot).
The last step is clearly not needed, Kumārila says that we only occasionally perform the last arthāpatti. I am also not sure about its specific chronology, especially because I am not sure about the chronological separation of ahampratyaya. Do we have any evidence that Kumārila thought of it as occurring later? I have to admit that so far I thought that ahampratyaya was the I’s recognition of itself qua knower while it knows. If it were to occur after the cognition, it would have a viṣaya which is no longer available and thus violate the satsamprayoga ‘connection with something present’ requirement of PMS 1.1.4, which is meant to exclude yogic perception, but also Buddhist types of mānasapratyakṣa. Or at least so I thought. (Buddhists allow for that, given that they believe in momentariness and hence stricto sensu for them every cognition is always about a previous moment; Naiyāyikas don’t have this problem because cognitions are qualities of the self, and hence they are perceptible like other qualities) But how could “my” version work? I can imagine two possibilities:

  1. We would need to have two cognitions happening simultaneously, namely that of the pot and that of the aham. This would be impossible for Naiyāyikas, since the manas cannot work simultaneously for both cognitions. Mīmāṃsā authors are divided among the ones who claim that manas is atomic and can therefore only join the ātman to one sense-faculty at a time and the ones who claim that it is vibhu and thus allow for simultaneous perceptions (yugapajjnānutpattir iṣṭaiva, Gāgābhaṭṭa p. 16). I wonder whether this would be similar to the case of apprehending at the same time the piṇḍa, its jāti, its qualities etc. I also need more homework to understand which of the two views is Kumārila’s.
  2. Alternatively, we could imagine that perception is a temporally extended process for Kumārila (see his discussion of the move from nirvikalpa to savikalpa pratyakṣa). If this is the case, while I look at the pot I could first know it indistinctly (nirvikalpa stage), then as a pot etc. (savikalpa stage). Perhaps the acknowledgement that it’s me knowing it could take place within this temporal extension? The only difference with the Naiyāyika-anuvyavasāya-like hypothesis would be that the object would not be a preceding cognition (which violates PMS 1.1.4) but still the same I that is currently cognising the pot.

Sucarita’s commentary in Watson 2020, fn. 28 suggests that the ātman grasps itself through a dharma of itself, being cognition, hence there is not the same fault of double use of the same thing as in the Buddhists’ svasaṃvedana, because the grasper is only the cognition and the grasped is only the self (whereas for the Buddhists the same awareness is grasper and grasped). It is also noteworthy here that Kumārila explicitly denies any form of self-illumination by the cognition.

By the way, one may wonder whether this temporal synchronicity between perception and its object would not be violated also in the case of recognition. Mīmāṃsā authors explicitly say that recognition (e.g. “This person is Devadatta!”) is made of perception (“This” person I am seeing) and memory (the “Devadatta” I saw in the past and am now remembering). But I have already discussed that ahampratyaya is not always a case of recognition.

Watson 2020 is also very relevant for the identification of the forth view, attributed to Prabhākara, and its phenomenological character (with the ātman being neither pratyakṣa nor parokṣa, fn. 44) and has helpful footnotes on Śālikanātha’s understanding of Kumārila’s view.

Watson 2010, pp. 303—310, is key on ahampratyaya vs. svasaṃvedana, and how we might be aware of the ‘I’ without being aware of the cognition it is undertaking when we are aware that “*I* know”.

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Workshop on Medhātithi

On March 21 2026 the University of Toronto will host a workshop on “Medhātithi across Sanskrit jurisprudence and philosophy of action” (guest speaker: Alessandro Giudice).

Medhātithi (9th c.) is a key figure in Sanskrit jurisprudence, who applied reasoning methods from the Mīmāṃsā school of philosophy to the understanding of the most well-known and influential jurisprudential text, Manu’s Treatise on the Norm (Mānavadharmaśāstra). This one-day long workshop will see students of UofT engaging with his philosophy of action and of law and exploring several issues, from his discussion of why lying is compulsory if a person’s life is at risk to the purpose of fighting once all hopes of victory are gone and up to whether sex might ever be a duty.

The keynote address will be delivered by Alessandro Giudice, who is a postdoctoral researcher within the Cluster of Excellence “Cross-Cultural Philology” at the Institute for Indology and Tibetology, Munich University, and the author of a recent monograph on Medhātithi, available OA here: https://www.edizioniets.com/priv_file_libro/5546.pdf.

The title of the keynote will be: “Medhātithi, a Wide-Ranging Ninth-Century Scholar: From Law to Grammar, from Rhetoric to Philosophy.” (12pm, Toronto time)

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Forum on International Legal History & Philosophy (in India) (CfP)

CHANAKYA NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY, PATNA

Forum on International Legal History & Philosophy, 15 April 2026 (in-person)

Call for Papers and Engaged Listeners

About: This Call for ideas (in the form of detailed abstracts) invites scholars working in International Law, Constitutional Law, and Legal Philosophy, whether individually or through interdisciplinary approaches. The contours of the forum are outlined below in two overlapping and porous themes.

Aims: We intend to stimulate discourse on international legal history and theory employing regional and archival lens. We expect a rough sketch of your clearly formulated idea to make such stimulations. We aim to discuss the vitality of your research ideas for them to be transformed into future research (beyond this forum).
More details in the pdf, here.

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Does Kumārila accept I-cognition as a kind of perception? (updated 2)

Kumārila is an extremely systematic thinker. Thus, if there is a seeming contradiction in Kumārila’s thought, it is likely the case that the contradiction is only a seeming one and that it can be solved.
In the case at stake, we have:

  1. Kumārila stating in the ātmavāda chapter within his ŚV that we can directly grasp the self through our awareness of ourselves as an I (via ahampratyaya)
  2. Kumārila stating, against Dignāga, that cognitions are not transparent to themselves (see ŚV pratyakṣa 79, 134 and then ŚV śūnyavāda) and that they are rather known a posteriori through arthāpatti based on the fact that something, e.g., a pot, has now the characteristic of being manifest (jñātatā or prākaṭya, see ŚV pratyakṣa 56) and that this characteristic wold be unexplainable otherwise
  3. Kumārila stating in the pratyakṣa chapter within the ŚV that perception is sense-perception

Which sort of cognition is ahampratyaya? The “I” cannot be known through cognitions’ awareness of themselves (as in Prabhākara), because of No. 2. Nor can the “I” be known through perception, because of No. 3. Again, given that there must be a solution (the point is too striking to have been missed by Kumārila himself) and that No. 2 looks quite sure, let me try to explore No. 3. Could it be that Kumārila accepts perception as sense-perception AND ahampratyaya? (In this connection, please note that also Jhā writes that “the notion of “I” […] is directly perceptible by the Senses”, fn on ŚV ātmavāda v. 107).

The relevant verses in the chapter on perception are mainly addressed against upholders of yogic perception. Kumārila insists there that perception is about present contents, and the “I” would qualify. He also says that perception arises from a contact between the object and the sense-faculty (sati indriyasaṅgame […] tasya (=pratyakṣasya) evaṃdharmakatvataḥ, vv 17–18), thus excluding svasaṃvedana or other forms of non-sensory direct perception from pratyakṣa. Still, ahampratyaya could qualify as belonging to perception. The sense-faculty at stake in the case of the “I” could be manas, the inner sense faculty. It is in this sense somehow disappointing that Kumārila does not mention the case of ahampratyaya while discussing ātman-manas contact in ŚV pratyakṣa, v. 66. Moreover, ŚV pratyakṣa v. 83 discusses the apprehension of pleasure and pain via manas, but does not mention the case of the manas also cognising the “I”. Even more relevant, v.83 follows a discussion of how a cognition cannot grasp itself and how pleasure etc. can be an exception because there is no svasaṃvedana there, but rather the apprehension of something inhering in the self, via the manas (see Pārthasārathi thereon: manaḥsañjñakenendriyeṇa saṃyuktaḥ ātmā svasamavetān sukhādīn […] pratipadyate). If we were to apply the same scheme to ahampratyaya, we would need to say that the self, connected to the manas, grasps the self itself, which seems to contradict the point made in v. 82, against reflectivity. Also disappointing in this regard are ŚV pratyakṣa, vv. 134–139, that discuss the role of manas in svasaṃvitti (refuted by Kumārila) and pleasure etc. (accepted) and never mention the case of “I-cognitions”. Then, again, ŚV pratyakṣa v. 160 states that manas can work on its own, without an external object, but only cites pleasure and pain as an example (yathā hi manasaḥ sārdhaṃ rūpādau cakṣurādinā | pravṛttiḥ sukhaduḥkhādau kevalasyaiva dṛśyate ||). Same with ŚV śabdanityatādhikaraṇa 337 on manas grasping pleasure etc. when not connected with the external senses.
This is all not conclusive, but it is disheartening that Kumārila never mentions the case of ahampratyaya in the chapter on perception, if ahampratyaya is in fact a case of perception.

At this point I might have been too negative about the possibility of ahampratyaya being a case of perception. Let me therefore look at the evidence in favour of it. The main one is that ahampratyaya is mentioned as an evidence for the existence of the self and as being different than inference in ŚV ātmavāda v. 107. Next, ahampratyaya is discussed in conjunction with recognition (pratyabhijñā) in the same chapter (v. 109, v. 137), and we know that recognition is a combination of memory and perception.

Could it be that ahampratyaya is just a case of recognition? In favour of this view run a few passages in Pārthasārathi’s commentary, where he says pratyabhijñārūpeṇa ahampratyayena (ad ŚV ātmavāda v. 109) and ekasantānasambandhino ‘hampratyayā ekajñātṛviṣayā iti pratyabhijñeti (ad ŚV ātmavāda v. 139), as well as the fact that the self is proven to exist because of phenomena like desire, which need some extension through time (perception of X, memory that X in the past produced pleasure, desire of X, see vv. 104–105). However, recognition requires a preceding (perceptual) awareness (and Kumārila has already established that inference does not establish the ātman). How could one re-cognise something if one had not cognised it in the first place? Recognition is essential in the argumentative structure of ŚV ātmavāda, because this has as its main opponent the Buddhist epistemologists’ point of view on the self being momentary. Yet, it would be strange to claim that ahampratyaya is only a recognition, since this would deny the phenomenological appeal that we recognise ourselves qua-I immediately (not inferentially, as Nyāya-Vaiśeṣikas would like it to be, see vv. 92–101).

At this point I wonder whether for Kumārila ahampratyaya is an ad hoc pramāṇa, a cognition that never ceases every time one cognises something (see ŚV ātmavāda 133), but different than the arthāpatti through which one knows a posteriori that a cognition has taken place. Now, against that runs Kumārila’s mention of six pramāṇas (e.g., ŚV codanā 111cd), which seem to either point to ahampratyaya as a subspecies within one of the main sources of knowledge or to ahampratyaya as not necessarily knowledge-conducive. Could be just a cognition (jñāna), one that is not necessarily true, but that remains valid as long as it is not falsified? However, a pramāṇa is in Kumārila exactly defined as something that remains valid as long as it is not falsified. That is, in Nyāya it is easy to distinguish pramāṇas from thinking processes that are not *necessarily* knowledge-conducive although they might lead to true cognitions, such as tarka. But this distinction does not seem to be available to Kumārila’s falsificationism. He does use the term pramāṇa also for sources other than the six (pratyakṣa, anumāna, śabda, upamāna, arthāpatti, abhāva), for instance in the case of pratyabhijñā and of the hermeneutic pramāṇas, but both can be reduced to a subspecies of one of the six pramāṇas. This all would lead one back to ahampratyaya being a form of manas-pratyakṣa, with the ātman featuring both as the subject and object thereof.

ŚV ātmavāda 142 seems to offer a slightly different point of view, with the ātman being described as self-luminous (through the simile of a light, jyotiḥ). Thus, even though Kumārila refutes (see point No. 2 above) self-luminosity in the case of cognitions, he seems to accept it for the self. The next verses explains that this does not apply to other people’s selves, that need to be known through inference (v. 145) and perhaps also through analogy and linguistic communication combined (v. 144). Unfortunately, Uṃveka’s commentary is not available for this chapter and Pārthsārathi does not add much to this short section.

By the way, one might wonder whether ahampratyaya could ever count as knowledge, given that it is unfalsifiable. However,
a. Kumārila has defeated the alternatives already (mainly bhūtacaitanyavāda, or physicalism and the non-physicalist illusionism of Buddhist epistemologists)
b. Kumārila showed at least in one case that he is comfortable with an unfalsifiable knowledge, namely the Veda.

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Fixed duties vs imperfect duties (updated)

Mīmāṃsā authors distinguish between fixed/conditional duties on the one hand, and elective duties on the other. Even Maṇḍana wants to keep them distinct, though insisting that in both cases the commands can be reduced to descriptions of states of affairs. The main difference is about the “ought-entails-can” principle, that triggers the “as-much-as-one-can” provision only in the case of fixed and conditional duties.

Fixed/conditional duties, like “imperfect duties” (in Analytic philosophy) have some tolerance for imperfect performances. They also, like imperfect duties, run over one’s lifetime and are made of “individual, momentary actions that, considered individually, do not make a difference to the realization of the end” (Nefsky-Tenenbaum 2026). In fact, assuming one’s daily performance of the Agnihotra as a paradigm example of a fixed duty, each individual performance is not going to be difference-making and could have been skipped without changing the final goal if one, for instance, had died before that day. Elective duties, like perfect duties, are instead about punctual performances. However, the similarities do not extend further. Imperfect duties typically include the possibility of complying with the duty beyond what is typically expected (in fact, a typical feature of imperfect duties is that there is no specific limit set about what is expected). By contrast, Mīmāṃsā authors unanimously agree that one needs to follow the duties as they are prescribed (either exactly as prescribed or to the best of one’s abilities). Offering more clarified butter than prescribed is not better, because it creates a new duty, different than the one prescribed (just like one cannot offer butter mixed with honey if the command requires one to offer butter). Why this fundamental distinction? Because the concept of fixed duties is not grounded in any universal ethical law (so that “the more the better” could apply), but rather in a specific deontic source.

Thus, it appears that the distinction between fixed/conditional and elective duties and in general the possibility to discuss deontics independently of ethics is one that has not been discussed in contemporary ethics and deontics in Euro-American philosophy and one on which cross-cultural discussions might be beneficial for Euro-American philosophers for pointing out a possible blind spot in their analysis of duties. Conversely, the study of Sanskrit philosophy could benefit of more scholars working on it, both in traditional and new ways —philosophy is dance, not ballet (citing Peter Adamson) and Sanskrit philosophy desperately needs more dancers.

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Third Kumārila conference (18–22 May 2026)

Kumārila is one of the rare thinkers who are truly irreplaceable. Sanskrit philosophy would not have been the same without his contributions to epistemology (e.g., his epistemology of absence, of linguistic communication, his theory of intrinsic justification…), philosophy of action, deontics, hermeneutics and ontology. Still, his work is partly untranslated and largely understudied. A group of scholars started meeting in 2024 with the shared purpose of studying Kumārila and making him accessible to scholars of philosophy. As a result of the first two Kumārila conferences, a reader on Kumārila will be published by OUP at the end of 2026. During this third conference scholars will translate, analyse and discuss new passages by Kumārila in 2- or 3-hours sessions. Younger scholars (including students) will also be invited to the conference and will deliver shorter talks.

Preliminary program

Monday May 18th
Chair: John Nemec
8.30 onwards: Breakfast
9–11 Tempa Sherpa, Kumārila on vyāpti. From the definition of inference in the Śābarabhāṣya to Kumārila’s Anumānapariccheda (ŚV, anumāna)
11–11:15 Tea break
11:15-12:15pm Nirali Patel, Kumārila has his yogic cake and eats it: Kumārila on ātmatuṣṭi (TV 1.3.adh.7)
12.15–1.15 Zihao Wu, tbd
1:15–2:15 Lunch break
Chair: Ajay Rao
2:15–3:15pm Devansh Bharadvaj, Kumārila on the perception of the self (ŚV, ātmavāda)
3.15–3.30: Tea break
3.30–5.30 Hugo David, tbd

Tue May 19th
Chair: Manasicha Akepiyapornchai
8.30 onwards: Breakfast
9–11 Tarinee Awasthi, tbd
11–11:15 Tea break
11:15-1:15pm Jonathan Peterson, tbd
1:15–2:15 Lunch break
Chair: Daniele Cuneo
2:15-4:15pm Andrew Ollett, tbd
4.15–4.30: Tea break
4.30–5.30: Sarju Patel, tbd

Wed May 20th
Chair: Vincent Lee
8.30 onwards: Breakfast
9–10 tbd
10–10:15 Tea break
10.15–12.15: Alessandro Graheli, Kumārila on Grammar in the vyākaraṇādhikaraṇa (TV 1.3.adh. 9)
12:15–1.15 Lunch break
Chair: Taisei Shida
1.15–3.15 tbd
3.15–3.30: Tea break
3.30–4.30: tbd
4.30-5.30: tbd

Thu May 21st
Chair: Munena Moiz
8.30 onwards: Breakfast
9–10 Kiyotaka Yoshimizu, Nitya or Kāmya from the Mīmāṃsā Viewpoint (TV ad 2.4, adh. 1)
10-10.15: Tea break
10.15–12:15: Monika Nowakowska, upāṃśuyājādhikaraṇa (TV ad MS 2.2.9-12)
12.15-1.15pm Lunch break
Chair: Jesse Pruitt
1.15-3.15pm Larry McCrea, vacanavyakti from Grahaikatvādhikaraṇa (pp. 705-709 in the Anandashrama 1st ed.)
3.15–3.30: Tea break
3.30–5.30: Akane Saito, tbd

Fri May 22nd
Chair: Shashank Rao
8.30 onwards: Breakfast
9–11: Kei Kataoka, arthaikatva (TV 2.1.46)
11-11.15: Tea break
11.15–12.15: Alessandro Ganassi, tbd
12.15-1.15: lunch together (RSVP)
Chair: Elisa Freschi
1.15-3.15pm: Alex Watson, tbd
3.15–3.30: Tea break
3.30–5.30: Meera Sridhar, Substitution of ritual substances: Annotated Translation and Analysis of Kumārila’s Ṭupṭīkā 6.3

Venue: University of Toronto, Mississauga campus

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So, you think that Western thought is more diverse and interesting than “non-Western thought”?

So, you think that Western thought is more diverse and interesting than “non-Western thought”?

I have a non-polemical question: What did you read within what you call “non-Western thought”? If the list is extremely short compared to what you know of Euro-American philosophy (say, less than 100 titles), or if it focuses on a special field (say, Confucian ethics) then it’s easy to have a less diverse impression. The problem is that scholars or students who speak of “non-Western thought” as being “less diverse” have at most taken a single class on anything other than Euro-American philosophy.
Do you think you would have an idea of Euro-American philosophy as very diverse and interesting if you had studied, say, Sanskrit philosophy for decades, and had taken a single class on French existentialism and German phenomenology?

More in general, many Philosophy departments think that diversifying means adding a single class on anything that is not Euro-American mainstream philosophy (it can be Maori political thought, ubuntu ethics, Confucianism, Sanskrit epistemology…).
The result is often implicitly suggesting that there is a single world of “non-Western” thought and that everyone can teach it, because it does not go very deep.
For instance, I am routinely asked to answer questions about, e.g., the Zhaungzi, as if my expertise should extent to the whole of “non-Western thought”, because it is implicitly assumed to be very limited.

I ask students on the first class on Sanskrit philosophy how many texts do they think were composed in Sanskrit philosophy if compared to Greek philosophy and they are ridiculously wrong, guessing anything between 30 and 300 texts.

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A word of caution on philosophical methodology

Sanskrit philosophy is extremely sophisticated and I am convinced that we don’t need to borrow categories from Euro-American philosophy to better understand it.
Parallels to Euro-American theories are welcome because they can help us focus on overlooked aspects, but they are not more important than parallels that go in the opposite directions, namely looking at Euro-American philosophy from the lens of Sanskrit philosophy.
In other words, it is good to ask, for instance, whether Mīmāṃsā epistemology is a form of internalism or of externalism, but one should

  • a) never forget that the binary opposition between internalism and externalism is not a fact about the world, but rather a philosophical choice and that the epistemological landscape could be described otherwise;
  • b) be also ready to wonder whether, e.g., Timothy Williamson embraces intrinsic validity (svataḥ prāmāṇya).

Point a) enables one to see that a the conceptual space is not constrained by any given binary etc. and that one of the main contributions of Global philosophy is to question one’s frame of reference for the questions one asks, not just for the answers one receives. Point b) helps one in highlighting possibly overlooked aspects within, e.g., T.Williamson’s theory.
In summary, I am convinced that we should not force Sanskrit theories into the straitjacket of extant Euro-American terminology. By doing so, we would be missing the main benefits of starting a broad conversation.

UPDATE: Don’t miss the interesting conversation on the same post here: https://indianphilosophyblog.org/2025/12/08/a-word-of-caution-on-philosophical-methodology/#comment-393184

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Kumārila graduate students workshop at UofT

I started last year to organise small workshops at the end of each graduate class, for graduate students to present their work. This year’s topic is Kumārila (you probably guessed it). 

It will take place on Dec 3 morning and Dec 4 morning, 9-12 Toronto time.

The idea is a low-stake workshop where students get feedback so that they can improve their final papers (or embed ideas in future articles).