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SEVEN PADĀRTHAS TARKA
NIRNAYA ETC
In this chapter (Āhnika XI) Jayanta offers an account of seven padārthas, viz. tarka, nirnaya, vāda, jalpa, vitandā, hetvābhāsa, chala, and they too being logically independent of one another have to be taken up one by one.
(1) Tarka (Reflection) The eighth padārtha is tarka or reflection. This padārtha is logically related to the earlier treated padārtha saṁsaya or doubt and the immediately forthcoming padārtha nirnaya or demonstrated conclusion. For the understanding is that an inferential demonstration beginning with a doubt and ending with a demonstrated conclusion is possibly mediated by a reflection where the likelihood is strengthened that the conclusion to be finally arrived at is true rather than its suggested.rival; Jayanta considers the objection that such an intermediate state is never actually experienced and his answer amounts to pleading that such a state is actually experienced sometimes. The actual words of the aphorism concerned do not convey all this information in a natural fashion, for they seem to mean. : 'In relation to a subject-matter not known a causal consideration aimed at attaining knowledge about this subjectmatter - this is what is called tarka or reflection'?; but the above is how the subsequent generations of Naiyāyikas understood these words. In this connection one point was specially emphasised, a point which Jayanta notes. Thus it was said that tarka is not itself a pramāna inasmuch as it is simply of the form of a possible aid to an inference. This led to the classical Nyāya practice of contrasting pramā (= valid cognition) to tarka (= reflection) just as the same was contrasted to apramā (= invalid cognition), saṁsaya (= doubt), smrti (= memory). Then Jayanta, quoting the example of a smrti text, notes that the word 'tarka' is often used as a mere synonym for 'anumāna'. Similarly, he argues that Mimāṁsaka's concept of üha (a synonym for 'tarka') is but a case of inference;
