On the other hand, I guess that the Mimamsas and Vedantans themselves think of earlier Veda and later Veda or the Upanishads as itself being a united body of text.

Yes, when one steps back and looks at the material, it's not simply simultaneous representations ritual on the one side and more philosophical investigation on the other, but any scholar of the Vedic materials in the other side of the world, the Upanishads would say, well, these are in some way related as stages chronologically earlier and later in a singular development over time. It's not necessarily the case that the later is better or more mature, but nonetheless, the later does seem to presume the earlier, and therefore, whether one is looking at it through the eyes of a Mimamsa ritual scholar or a Vedanta philosophical scholar, the presumption on both sides would be that the earlier and the later are integrally connected with one another and are together for some purpose.

So we've got a layer of text, in a sense, or a layering of text. We've got these original Vedic texts, including the Upanishads, then we've got these sutra texts, the aphorisms, which systematize and deal with problems, and then we've got layers of commentary on these sutras, and some of the most important figures in both prior Mimamsa and Vedanta are commentators, like Shankara, for example. Now, you, in some of your early work on Mimamsa, Pura Mimamsa, emphasized the opportunity and importance of excavating the meaning of Jaimini's sutra text, and trying to, if not strip away, the later commentary, at least trying to appreciate the sutra for its own sake. To what extent do you think that that's important and possible in the case of the Vedanta sutra, written by Daryana?

I think in both cases it's a necessary question to raise, first of all, because the two sutra texts that we have, the approximately 2700 sutras of Jaimini in the Mimamsa, the approximately 500, perhaps a few more, in the case of Badarayana, are, as it were, floating in space. Clearly, it would be hard to imagine that an author sat down one day and composed these vast sutra texts without any context, and they both give the impression of being located in teaching traditions. In fact, they may be reminders, both to teachers and their students of the topics that need to be considered, and probably themselves, therefore, in their early stages of development, were teaching tools in the lively context of debating on the one hand the ritual problems, on the other hand the philosophical problems. However, over time, we then have the, perhaps, receding or detachment from those teaching contexts, and we have these settled texts, the sutra texts, which, if they were meant to be reminders of an ongoing discussion, can seem rather more obscure if those ongoing discussions are no longer ongoing, or if those who are reading the text were not part of those discussions, and therefore, almost inevitably, in the case of these sutra texts, or, in fact, any sutra text, questions arise about, well, what is the context of this argument, what exactly is meant by the position that's being presented here, and, in fact, because the sutras are meant to be reminders, have devices for prompting memory regarding larger arguments, they're often extremely brief. Rarely are they full sentences, often just a word or two, and therefore, problems of interpretation come to the fore of what exactly is being meant in this context. And even though we would hope that the commentators would be part of living traditions of the teaching of these texts, they may be, on the one hand, Shabhara, separated by two or three or four centuries from the Jai Mani sutra composition, and Shankara could be, again, three, two centuries later than Badarayana. So, one has to trust that something coherent and continuous went on in the teaching tradition, and that in some way they're related to these materials, but the gap of time doesn't necessarily raise the issue of, do we actually understand what the original text was intending? And we can tell from both Shabhara and Shankara that there's also been intervening debates,

just as the original sutra is sometimes allude to other people's views, then sometimes Shabhara and Shankara allude to other people who are between the sutra and themselves, and so we can see that even though those works are lost,

those other ideas are kind of preserved in the commentaries themselves. Because they are teaching traditions, we know in both cases, first of all, both sutra texts mention the name of older teachers prior to the sutra text, but the commentators, Shabhara on the one side, and Shankara as the first commentator of Badantah on the other side, whose written work has come down to us, are referring to other opinions occasionally to a named teacher, said this or that, but often more vaguely saying there are some who say this, there are some who say that, those arguments in the intervening centuries are often further development of arguments that are in the sutra text themselves, which are argumentative texts, but nonetheless clearly Shabhara on the one side, Shankara on the other, are trying to encapsulate and then take a strong opinion regarding debates that have happened before their time.

When I asked you to sort of explain the difference between Mimamsa and Vedanta, you said, well, Mimamsa is more about ritual, Vedanta is more about philosophy or philosophical issues, and of course in our series we've also been treating Vedanta as a philosophical tradition, since it's a podcast and history of philosophy, but you're a professor of comparative theology, and I wanted to ask you whether you think that it's legitimate or maybe even more legitimate in some sense, to think of Vedanta texts as theological works as opposed to philosophical works?

I think I would say if I could back up for a moment, in both cases, both the Mimamsa and the Vedanta, there is a distinction between, on the one hand, the ritual practice, the meditative practices, and the issues that arise immediately, those are both distinguished from the efforts of the authors of the sutras, and then the commentators to understand, to put in context, to read according to tradition, to see claims about the nature of reality in these texts, and they certainly therefore move beyond the immediate practical matters of ritual performance or meditation, and then move into an entire religious context where the intellectual questions, performative questions, ethical questions are all interconnected. I think one could say that in both cases, and then we could focus on the Vedanta, the very idea of having the sutras and then having the commentary is in allegiance to the older texts which are considered to be sacred scripture. As we would put it, whether they were oral or written originally, is a different question, but nonetheless, there is a body of material that's come down to us. We are beholden to it, we submit ourselves to it, and work within its frame, and then think as vigorously and robustly as we can about the issues arising. I think for me, with my understanding of, in the modern west, the difference between philosophy and theology, that while there are certainly strong philosophical elements in both Vedanta and Mimamsa, because there is a certain boundary within which their deliberation takes place, the Mimamsa thinkers, Vedanta thinkers will not question the authority of scripture, but rather will take in some way that the scripture is presenting the problems that we inevitably must deal with, that there's a certain deference to scripture thinking within the tradition of scripture, therefore within the tradition of the performance of the mandates of scripture, the insights that arise from scripture, and I think ordinarily speaking, that could easily be called theological thinking rather than a philosophical thinking where independence of thought or simply the commentary on a prior philosopher would be an issue. One sacred scripture and the expectations about religious performance follow, theology seems to be a very good word to use.