---
type: Concept
bundle: mimamsa-dharma
bundle_version: 0.10.0
id: atman
title: Ātman (Mīmāṃsā)
iast: Ātman
devanagari: आत्मन्
description: 'In Mīmāṃsā, the real, plural, permanent self that performs enjoined acts and persists to enjoy their fruits in a later life, inferred because the ritual economy requires an enduring agent-enjoyer; NOT the Advaita non-dual Self, NOT a momentary bundle-self, NOT the body or mind.'
darshana:
- Pūrva-Mīmāṃsā
text_source: Ślokavārttika, Ātmavāda
tags:
- atman
- mimamsa
- self
- realism
not:
- term: 'the Advaita non-dual Self (identical with Brahman)'
  why: 'The Mīmāṃsā ātman is many, one per person, real as an individual substance, and defined by its role as agent of ritual and enjoyer of fruit. It is not the single non-dual Ātman-Brahman of Advaita (see upanishadic-core v0.6). Reading one into the other erases the pluralist realism Mīmāṃsā needs for its account of action and result.'
  instead: 'Render the Mīmāṃsā ātman as the real, plural, enduring agent-enjoyer required by the ritual economy, distinct from the Advaita non-dual Self.'
- term: 'a momentary or bundle self (Buddhist anātman)'
  why: 'Mīmāṃsā argues against no-self and momentariness precisely because a vanishing self could not perform an act now and reap its fruit later; the enduring self is inferred from the deferred fruit.'
- term: 'the body, the senses, or the mind'
  why: 'The ātman is the persisting substrate distinct from body and mind, since these perish while the enjoyer of a future fruit must persist.'
related:
- /concepts/phala.md
- /concepts/apurva.md
- /concepts/jati.md
timestamp: '2026-07-08'
okf_version: '0.2'
license: CC BY-SA 4.0
---

# Ātman (Mīmāṃsā) -- आत्मन्

**Not:** the Advaita non-dual Self, a momentary bundle-self, the body or mind

## What It Actually Means

Mīmāṃsā''s self is a working posit of its whole system. Because an enjoined act''s fruit (phala, via apūrva) is often reaped long after the act, even in another life, there must be one enduring agent who acts and later enjoys; hence a permanent, individual ātman, and as many ātmans as there are agents. Kumārila and Prabhākara differ on how the self is known (for Prabhākara it is co-revealed in every cognition as the knower; for Kumārila it is the object of a self-directed cognition), but both hold it real, plural, and permanent. This realist, pluralist self is the sharpest contrast with Advaita in the whole corpus.

## Audience Metaphor

A pension only makes sense if the person who pays in now is the same one who draws out decades later; a self that vanished between would break the arrangement. The Mīmāṃsā ātman is the ritual pension-holder: one enduring person who performs now and collects the fruit later, and there are as many such persons as there are agents.

## Citations

1. Kumārila, Ślokavārttika, the Ātmavāda -- see [references/slokavarttika.md](../references/slokavarttika.md)
2. Cross-bundle: ātman in dharma-foundation v0.1 and the non-dual Self in upanishadic-core v0.6, the contrasting treatments
