uttara-mImAMsA???

[vidya at cco.caltech.edu]

> How about the vedAntasUtras, a.k.a. brahmasUtras?  Has
> anyone seen them being referred to as the uttaramImAMsAsUtras?

The mImAmSA sUtras are not known as pUrvamImAmSAsUtras either, even though
they have come to be applied in a restricted sense. The mImAmSakas traditionally
held the jnAnakANDa portion to be arthavAda, whereas in the Vedanta systems
the jnAnakANDa supersedes in some sense the karmakANDa. This is particularly
true of advaita, which traditionally views the two portions as being addressed
to two completely different audiences. 

Ramanuja and Vedanta Desika seem to view pUrva and uttara mImAmSAs as parts
of a whole. This seems to do primarily with their view of the role of meditation
(SravaNa, manana and nidhidhyAsana) in knowing Brahman. Sankara holds that the
upanishadic statement in this regard is not an injunction and that Brahman
knowledge is immediate, so that one either has it or one doesn't. He does this
because he does not want to make Brahman realization to be the effect of any
activity, even if that activity is only meditation. Since Ramanuja's school
does not hold the same view of Brahman as Sankara's, they have no problem in
viewing the Atma vA are Srotavya.h, mantavya.h, nidhidhyAsitavya.h statement
as an injunction to meditate. But that does not mean that they accord equal
importance to the Vaidika karmas enjoined as per a strict mImAmSA interpretationof the karmakANDa. Nor would they agree, I suppose, to the atheistic turn that
traditional pUrva mImAmSA can take. 

S. Vidyasankar