Mīmāṃsā — The School of Vedic Inquiry
Mīmāṃsā (Sanskrit: मीमांसा, 'inquiry, investigation, reflection') is one of the six āstika (orthodox) darśanas of Indian philosophy — the school systematically devoted to the interpretation and application of Vedic injunctions (vidhi). The term derives from the verbal root man ('to think') with an intensive suffix, conveying sustained, penetrating investigation. Pūrva Mīmāṃsā — 'the earlier inquiry' — addresses the karmakāṇḍa, the portion of the Vedas dealing with ritual duties, sacrificial injunctions, and the means of attaining heaven and other fruits through correct ritual action. Its foundational text is the Mīmāṃsā Sūtras of Jaimini (c. 300 BCE). Uttara Mīmāṃsā — 'the later inquiry' — is another name for Vedānta, which takes up the jñānakāṇḍa and investigates the nature of Brahman. The two together constitute a comprehensive inquiry into the entire Vedic corpus.
Jaimini's Pūrva Mīmāṃsā developed sophisticated hermeneutical principles for interpreting Vedic sentences, including rules for resolving textual contradictions (virodha), determining primary versus secondary meanings (mukhya-gauṇa), and understanding the purpose (arthavāda) of seemingly non-injunctive passages. The school established two major sub-traditions: the school of Kumārila Bhaṭṭa, which defends the svatah-prāmāṇya (self-validity) of Vedic knowledge against Buddhist epistemology; and the school of Prabhākara, which emphasizes the primacy of niyoga (injunction/duty) as the core meaning of Vedic sentences. Both schools accept the Veda as apauruṣeya (not of human authorship) and nitya (eternal), doctrines that carry over into Viśiṣṭādvaita.
Rāmānujācārya engaged critically and constructively with Mīmāṃsā throughout his works. His Śrī Bhāṣyam defends the authority of Vedic testimony (śabda-pramāṇa) as a valid independent means of knowledge (pramāṇa), a position shared with Mīmāṃsakas but directed toward Brahman-knowledge rather than ritual performance. Rāmānuja accepted Mīmāṃsā's principle that the Veda is self-validating and uncreated, but firmly corrected what he saw as Mīmāṃsā's fundamental error: the reduction of the Veda's purpose to ritual duty alone, at the expense of its deeper teaching about the nature of Bhagavān, the ātman, and liberation (mokṣa). In Viśiṣṭādvaita, the entire Vedic corpus — both karmakāṇḍa and jñānakāṇḍa — is understood as revealing Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa as the supreme reality, and ritual action is not an end in itself but a purifying means (sādhana) leading toward bhakti and eventual liberation through divine grace (prapatti).