Mīmāṃsā Sūtra

The foundational text of Pūrva Mīmāṃsā, the school of Vedic exegesis, in twelve chapters of short aphorisms. It opens by announcing an inquiry into dharma and argues that dharma, what ought to be done, is known only through Vedic injunction, since perception and inference reach only what already exists, not what is to be done. To secure that authority it defends the eternity of the relation between word and meaning and, as later commentators developed it, the view that the Veda has no author, human or divine. Most of the work is a set of interpretive principles for ritual texts: how to tell injunctions from descriptive passages, how to rank conflicting kinds of textual evidence, and how procedures carry over from a model rite to its variants. Śabara's commentary, and the rival sub-commentaries of Kumārila and Prabhākara, made it a school of philosophy of language and epistemology.

It is one of the most sophisticated theories of textual interpretation in the ancient world, and its rules shaped Indian law and hermeneutics long after many of the rituals themselves had faded.