In interpreting the opening sūtra, athāto dharmajijñāsā, Śabara develops several different solutions, some of which are explicitly refuted, and some that move towards higher conclusions while giving the appearance of his own solutions. There are two intermediate and final conclusions in his explanation of the first word atha. The opponent whom Śabara criticizes at the beginning of his commentary by saying that “the wording of the sūtra should not be interpreted in a way that deviates from worldly wording,” is, according to Kumārila, Bhavadāsa. Bhavadāsa seems to have interpreted athātaḥ as a kind of technical term for immediate succession. That is to say, Bhavadāsa took “immediate succession” as the starting point for his interpretation of the sūtra. If we deduce from this fact the overall picture of Bhavadāsa’s own interpretation of the sūtra, it is natural to assume that the intermediate conclusion of Śabara reflects or adopts Bhavadāsa’s own reasoning and conclusion. Śabara himself, in an attempt to go beyond Bhavadāsa, has extended Bhavadāsa’s reasoning and at the same time formulated a new conclusion of his own, bearing in mind the supposedly earlier interpretations. In the concluding part, however, Śabara seems to have refrained from putting forward his own novel interpretation and repeated the safe conclusion of Bhavadāsa, whose authority had already been established.
