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NYAYA THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
pramāņa or the ground of knowledge. Hence pramāņa or the method of knowledge is the means or the operative cause (karaña) of knowledge, as distinguished from the pramātā or subject and prameya or object which are indeed logically implied in all knowledge but are not directly concerned in producing objectively valid knowledge (pramā)."
Thus according to the Naiyāyikas, the objective validity of knowledge is due to pramāna or the method on which it is based. The conscious subject and the cognised object cannot account for the correspondence of knowledge with real facts. The subject and the object participate in truth in so far as they are made to do so by some efficient organ of knowledge, the sense or the reason with wbich we are endowed. The universal condition of all knowledge is indeed consciousness. But from mere consciousness we cannot deduce the specific modes of knowledge, such as perception of the table, inference of coming rain, verbal cognitions and so forth. Hence while consciousness seems to be the first and the general cause of all knowledge, we require certain specific second causes to explain the particular modes of knowledge and their correspondence to particular objects or facts of the world. Such specific causes of knowledge are called pramānas in Indian philosophy.
1 NVT, pp. 22, 291,
