On Kumārila’s Reliance on the Mahābhāṣya

A platform of direct communication between Patañjali’s Mahābhāṣya (MBh, ca. 200–150? BCE) and Kumārila’s Tantravārttika (TV, ca. 600 CE) was obviously the vyākaraṇādhikaraṇa (the chapter on “the topic of grammar”) which is Kumārila’s contribution to the discussion on the Mīmāṃsāsūtras 1.3.24–29 as commented on by the Śabarabhāṣya (ca. 500 CE). However, Kumārila’s links to the MBh, especially in the TV, also manifest themselves in other chapters and in subtler forms, not necessarily obvious at first sight. In the article we focus on the presence – or a shadow of the presence – of the MBh in Kumārila’s TV, unveiled mainly in relation to the research into the TV discussion of dharmamūlas (i.e. sources of human knowledge of dharma). The choice of instances was not to be exhaustive, which would mean a study of the whole extant Kumārila’s literary production in search of his inspirations by Patañjali, but rather indicative. It also illustrates how important the MBh was to Kumārila as a fundamental source of linguistic and cultural knowledge in his project of (re)embedding of the Aryan, Brahmanical tradition structure in the Vedic ritual ground.