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400
NYAYA THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
between eating and fatness or between their absence. Hence to explam the apparent contradiction between fatness and absence of eating by day we have to suppose that there is eating at night Our knowledge of the fact that Devadatta eats at night does not follow from any universal proposition which is already known, because there is here no universal proposition at all. It is the result of an attempt to correlate his fatness with the absence of eating by day—a process of reasoning which is different from that involved in inference Similarly, the proposition, ‘A living man is either at home or out of it,' is not a generalisation from particular instances of the concomitance between a man's absence from home and presence outside. We cannot say tbat the one coexists with the other, just as smoke coexists with fire. Hence we cannot deduce our knowledge of the fact that Devadatta is out from any such universal proposition. Rather, it follows in the wake of any atteinpt to reconcile the facts that Devadatta lives and yet he does not live in the house. In fact, the socalled universal proposition is itself a statement of the conclusion in general terms and cannot really explain it. Hence arthāpatti is not a form of inference, but a separate source of knowledge.
3
Abhāra and anupalabdhı as sources of linowledge
Abhāva may be taken to mean either contrast or noncognition. In the first sense it means a relation of contrast or antithesis between two tbings as between existence and non-existence.' When there is such a relation of contrast or contradiction between two things, then from the existence of the one we may know the non-existence of the other and vice versa. Thus froin the non-existence of rain
1 Abbá vo virodbi, abhūtati bhūtasys, etc, NB., 22.1.
