---
type: Reference
bundle: mimamsa-dharma
bundle_version: 0.10.0
id: mimamsa-sutra
title: Mīmāṃsā Sūtra (Jaimini)
description: 'Jaimini''s Pūrva-Mīmāṃsā Sūtra, the root text of the school, opening with the definition of dharma as codanā-lakṣaṇa and setting out the rules for reading Vedic injunctions.'
tags:
- reference
- mimamsa-sutra
- jaimini
timestamp: '2026-07-08'
okf_version: '0.2'
license: CC BY-SA 4.0
---

# Mīmāṃsā Sūtra (Jaimini)

The Mīmāṃsā Sūtra of Jaimini (composed in the last centuries BCE) is the foundational text of Pūrva-Mīmāṃsā. Its first sūtras establish the school's programme: an inquiry into dharma (MS 1.1.1), the definition of dharma as *codanā-lakṣaṇo 'rtho dharmaḥ* (MS 1.1.2), and the defence of the Veda as the authorless, self-valid means of knowing it. The later books build the hermeneutic apparatus, the analysis of injunction and prohibition, the subordination of arthavāda and mantra, the application of mantras to rites (viniyoga), and the distinction of principal and subsidiary acts, that lets a reader determine exactly what the Veda enjoins. This bundle cites the sūtra wherever the root formulation carries the point.
