Jaimini

Jaimini was an ancient Indian sage (rishi) traditionally regarded as the founder of the Mimamsa school, one of the six schools (darsanas) of Hindu philosophy. His exact dates are unknown, though scholars usually place him somewhere between the 4th and 2nd centuries BCE. He is partly a legendary figure, so his life is known mainly through tradition and through the works attributed to him. He matters because his thinking shaped how the Vedas were interpreted across India.

According to tradition, he was a disciple of the sage Vyasa, to whom the compilation of the Vedas and the Mahabharata is credited. His principal work is the Mimamsa Sutras, a collection of around three thousand aphorisms that examine Vedic ritual and religious duty (dharma). Rather than dwelling on speculation about the Atman and Brahman, he argued that the meaning of the Vedas lies chiefly in ritual injunctions, and that ritual action has an efficacy of its own. His school arose when Vedic beliefs were losing their hold in the face of Buddhism, Jainism and skepticism, and his texts respond to those challenges. Later, the commentaries of Shabara, and then those of Kumarila and Prabhakara, gave the tradition its mature form. He is also credited with the Jaimini Bharata, a version of the Mahabharata focused on the horse sacrifice, and with the Jaimini Sutras, linked to astrology. His influence reached other schools: the Vedanta of Badarayana engaged with his ideas, sometimes agreeing and sometimes opposing them.