Prabhakara

Prabhakara is the founder of the second great school of Mimamsa — the “Guru-prabhakara” line whose radical theory of knowledge (no independent memory; every cognition includes its knower) startled both ritualists and Vedantins.

Life

A near-contemporary and in the legends a rival of Kumarila (the tradition names them opponents within the same school), Prabhakara wrote the Brihati, of which Salikanatha’s Rjuvimalapancika? — Salikanatha’s gloss (Rjuvimala-pancika) is the surviving guide. His dates are as uncertain as Kumarila’s (c. 6th–7th centuries by consensus ranges).

Teachings/Works

Prabhakara’s signature doctrines: all cognition is self-luminous and triadic (knower-known-cognition in one act); there is no memory without revival of the original cognition; the Veda’s authority is not imposed by God (his school refuses God as Vedic warrant more absolutely than Kumarila’s); error is not falsity but incompleteness (akhyati, “non-apprehension”).

Legacy

The Bhatta-Prabhakara dispute is Mimamsa’s internal classic; Vedanta’s theories of error were forged in answering both.

Verification notes

• His works survive in fragments and through Salikanatha; dating follows the Kumarila-era consensus ranges.
• Audited against Wikipedia (September 2026).