The Bhāṭṭa School of Benares
This chapter examines the reception of Dāyabhāga-centred, Gauḍa jurisprudence and Navya-Nyāya theories of ownership in the Dharmaśāstra and Mīmāṃsā writings of the Bhaṭṭa family of Mahārāṣṭrian Deśastha brāhmaṇas who led the southern (Dākṣinātya) community of paṇḍitas in Vārāṇasī between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Bhaṭṭas’ polemic against the Navadvīpan, Navya-Nyāya-inflected school of jurisprudence marks a watershed moment when the Mitākṣarā and its Mīmāṃsā-derived theory of ownership were incorporated into a broader, distinctively southern scale of Dharmaśāstra texts that framed the Mitākṣarā/Dāyabhāga divide as a debate between Mīmāṃsā and Navya-Nyāya theories of property. By the close of the seventeenth century, one could speak of two complex, comprehensive schools of Dharmaśāstric thought, inflected by Mīmāṃsā and Navya-Nyāya philosophy, centred around pedagogical networks in Vārāṇasī and Navadvīpa, taking paradigmatically divergent approaches to the problem of inheritance, and emanating from commentarial literature on the Mitākṣarā and Dāyabhāga respectively.