The Mīmāṁsā Toolkit, Subordinated

§8.1 What Vedānta takes from Mīmāṁsā

Pūrva-Mīmāṁsā and Vedānta disagree about the most important thing — whether the corpus is fundamentally about action or about a Person — and agree about almost everything procedural. Vedānta inherits Mīmāṁsā's interpretive apparatus almost entire and then points it at a different object. Ignoring this inheritance is why so much popular Vaiṣṇava argument is procedurally sloppy: the rules exist, they are ancient, and they are not ours to improvise around.

§8.2 The six marks of purport (ṣaḍ-liṅga)

The ṣaḍ-vidha tātparya-liṅga are the six indicators by which the subject of a passage is determined. This is the single most practically useful list in the whole method, and it is the first thing to run on any disputed passage. Each mark is stated here with the test it licenses.

1. Upakrama–upasaṁhāra (opening and conclusion) — What does the passage begin with and end with? A section that opens and closes on the same subject is about that subject, whatever appears in the middle. This mark alone settles a surprising number of disputes, including most of CF-04.
2. Abhyāsa (repetition) — What is repeated? Emphasis by repetition is a deliberate signal, not stylistic redundancy.
3. Apūrvatā (novelty) — What does this passage say that could not be known otherwise? A passage's purport is its novel content. This is why a passage's mundane reading is usually not its purport: if it merely reports what anyone could observe, it has no apūrva.
4. Phala (result) — What result does the passage state or imply? The stated fruit indicates the subject.
5. Arthavāda (eulogy) — What is present as praise rather than as assertion? Praise is subordinate to what it praises, and glorification of a subordinate entity within a section devoted to another does not transfer the subject.
6. Upapatti (demonstration) — What reasoning does the passage itself supply? A passage that argues for its conclusion indicates that conclusion as its purport.

§8.3 The hierarchy of evidence (Jaimini 3.3.14)

When two indicators point different ways, they are ranked. The Pūrva-Mīmāṁsā-sūtra states the order.

1. Śruti — direct statement. The text says it outright. Strongest.
2. Liṅga — indicative mark; a word's own capacity implying something unstated.
3. Vākya — syntactic unity; what the construction of the sentence forces.
4. Prakaraṇa — context; the surrounding discussion.
5. Sthāna — position; where the item sits in a sequence.
6. Samākhyā — name; what the section is conventionally called. Weakest.

The consequence, stated plainly: a conclusion built on the traditional title of a section is the weakest kind of argument available, and it loses to a direct statement every time. Much popular argument on all sides consists of samākhyā reasoning — this hymn is called such-and-such, therefore it is about such-and-such — presented with the confidence of śruti. It is rank six of six, and it is failure mode M06.

A further principle is standardly derived from the surrounding section: scriptural instruction outranks the logical instruments, and the logical instruments outrank conclusions drawn from narrative or historical report. This ordering is what licenses the treatment of Purāṇic narrative in §10 — narrative is real evidence, and it is the lowest-ranked kind, so it never overturns a direct Upaniṣadic statement. CF-08 is the worked instance.

§8.4 Adhikaraṇa structure

Every unit of Mīmāṁsā and Vedānta argument has five parts. The Ārk Engine's case-file format (Part III) is a direct implementation of it, with one field added:

1. Viṣaya — the passage under dispute, quoted in full, before any interpretation.
2. Saṁśaya — the doubt. The precise ambiguity, in one sentence. If you cannot state the doubt in one sentence you do not yet have an adhikaraṇa; you have a topic.
3. Pūrvapakṣa — the opposing position, stated at its strongest, by its own proponents where possible.
4. Siddhānta — the settled view, with the rule that produced it named.
5. Samanvaya / Saṅgati — how this unit relates to the section and the corpus.
6. Residue — our addition. What remains unresolved, and what would change the verdict.