lunar monthof Ashadh. The intercalary
month is an extra lunar month inserted
into the calendar about every thirty
months, to maintain general agreement
between the solar and lunar calendar. It
begins after any “regular” lunar month
in which the sunhas not moved into the
next sign of the zodiac, and takes the
name of the preceding month. Since the
intercalary month is an unusual phe-
nomenon, it is generally considered to
be inauspicious, and the most common
colloquial name for this month is the
malamasa, the “impure month.” When
this extra month falls in the lunar month
of Ashadh, however, devotees (bhakta)
of the god Vishnutake the opposite per-
spective and treat it as an exceedingly
holy time, dedicated to Vishnu in his
form as Purushottama (“best of men”).
Vaishnavas celebrate this month by
reading the sacred texts, chanting
Vishnu’s divine names, and other sorts
of worship. The month of Ashadh, and
its intercalary month, are especially
important for the Jagannathtemple in
the city of Puri, whose presiding deity,
Jagannath, is considered a form of
Krishnaand therefore, by extension, a
form of Vishnu. During every year
Ashadh is the month in which the Rath
Yatrafestival is performed in Puri, and in
years when the intercalary month falls in
Ashadh, new images of Jagannath and
his siblings are created.
Purva (“Earlier”) Mimamsa
One of the six schools of traditional
Hindu philosophy, most commonly
referred to simply as Mimamsa (“inves-
tigation”); it was given the name Purva
Mimamsa to distinguish it from the
Uttara (“Later”) Mimamsa school, better
known as Vedanta. The Mimamsa
school’s name is quite apt, for it empha-
sizes the investigation of dharma
(“righteous action”), particularly as
revealed in the Vedas, the earliest and
most authoritative Hindu religious texts.
Mimamsas affirmed that the Vedas were
the source of perfect knowledge, and
believed that the Vedas had not been
composed either by God or by human
beings but were rather simply heard
by the ancient sages through their
advanced powers of perception, and
then transmitted orally from generation
to generation.
Since they accepted the Vedas as the
primary source of authority and assumed
that the Vedas contained codes and pre-
scriptions pertaining to dharma, the
Mimamsas then developed complex
rules for textual interpretation to dis-
cern these, and it is for these rules that
they are best known. Mimamsas
believed in the existence of the soul and
in the necessary connection of actions
with their results inherent in the notion
of karma—two ideas attested to in the
Vedas. In cases where the result of an
action comes some time after the act, the
Mimamsas believed that the result existed
as an unseen force called apurva. This
force would invariably bring on the result,
thus maintaining the Vedic truth. The
Mimamsas were less unified on the exis-
tence of God. Jaimini(4th c. B.C.E.?), the
author of the Mimamsa Sutrasand the
founder of the school, seems to ignore the
issue completely, and 1,000 years later
another Mimamsa luminary, Kumarila,
argued against the existence of God.
Aside from developing methods for
interpreting the Vedas, Mimamsas also
contributed to logic and epistemology.
One of their notable contributions was
postulating two new pramanas, which
are the means by which human beings
can gain true and accurate knowledge.
All the philosophical schools accepted
perception (pratyaksha) as a pramana,
and most also accepted inference (anu-
mana) and authoritative testimony
(shabda). The two new modes devel-
oped by the Mimamsas were “presump-
tion” (arthapatti) and “knowledge from
absence” (abhava). The Mimamsas jus-
tified these additions by claiming that
they accounted for knowledge that
could not be subsumed under the exist-
ing pramanas. Arthapatti is an inference
from circumstance, in which a judg-
ment is made about one case based
solely on similarities to related cases. AnPurva (“Earlier”) Mimamsa