Tradition
Śabara
Overview
Śabara (also Śabara-svāmin) is a commentator on Jaimini's Purva Mimamsa Sutras, the Śābara-bhāṣyam, in turn commented upon by Kumarila Bhatta.
He dates to the early centuries CE, later than Patanjali's Mahabhashya, and earlier than Vatsyayana.
In his commentary on the Mimamsa Sutra, Śabara writes that perception, inference, supposition, or comparison cannot be a means of knowing dharma. He writes that the rest of the means of knowing depend on perception. Since perception cannot be used to understand dharma, neither can the other means of knowing. Based on this reasoning, Śabara posits that testimony, specifically the Veda, are the only way to know dharma.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
It is quite recently that we first obtained a definite knowledge of Indian Philosophy; in the main we understand by it religious ideas, but in modern times men have learned to recognize real philosophic writings. Colebrooke,[17] in particular, communicated abstracts to us from two Indian philosophic works, and this forms the first contribution we have had in reference to Indian Philosophy. What Frederick von…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy
States what Śabara is.
Moreover, they say that subsistence and matter are subject to qualities, and do so in a manner define them; and again, they make the qualities to be also bodies. But these things have much perplexity. For if qualities have a peculiar substance, for which they both are and are called bodies, they need no other substance; for they have one of their own. But if they have under them in common only that which the Stoic…
Plutarch, Complete Works of Plutarch — Volume 3
States what Śabara is.
So each one of these _purushas_ is omnipresent, each is all-pervading, but can act only through fine and gross manifestations of matter. The mind, the self-consciousness, the organs and the vital forces compose what is called the fine body, or what in Christian philosophy is called the “spiritual body” of man.
Swami Vivekananda, Jnâna Yoga, Part II
States what Śabara is.
Philosophers who discussed Śabara
Related ideas
Place in the tradition
Part of Mīmāṃsā.