Nyaya Theory of Knowledge

Author(s): S C Chateerjee
Publisher: University of Calcutta

Page 74

VALID KNOWLEDGE AND ITS METHOD 55 a thing when we judge it to be such-and-such, and it is such-and-such, i.e. as we determine it by qualities which the thing does in fact possess. Hence, according to the Nyāya, the truth of knowledge consists in its correspondence to facts.
So far pramā may be said to mean the same thing as knowledge in its narrow sense. Like the latter, it is a true belief which is connected with an assurance or conviction of its truth But the Nyāya goes further and adds a third qualification to pramā. According to it, pramā is not only a true and an assured cognition, but also a presentational cognition (anubharu) Otherwise, memory will have to be regarded as pramā. Memory-knowledge is both true and definitely believed to be true. Still it is not pramā, since it is not presentative but representative cognition. What then is anubhava ? To say, as some Naiyāyıkas have said, that anubhava is knowledge other than memory is just to beg the question. But the matter has not been left there. We are told by others that anubhava is knowledge of given facts as distinguished from those that are imagined or supplied by the mind. Or, it may be said that anubhava is knowledge which is grounded in and due to the object itself (arthajanya). Or again, it may be said that anubhava is a cognition that follows uniformly and immediately on the presence of its special cause. This means that a cognition is presentational if it is not separated from the existence of its unique cause by any interval of time As such, memory cannot be called anubhaba, because its object is not a given fact, or because it is not
1 Cf Lossky, The Inturtive Basis of Knowledge, p. 227 “We have acquired truth only when the differentiated appearance is con posed entirely of elements present on the ob,ect itself and nothing has been introduced into it from without."
2 Tattvamapäropitam rūpam, tasya nanamanubhavaḥ, Saptapadarthi, Bec 64.