Nyaya Theory of Knowledge

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

Page 78

VALID KNOWLEDGE AND ITS METHOD 59 nal operations of the visual organ, its contact with manas or the mind, and that of the latter with the soul. In inferen. tial and verbal knowledge there are such specific psychic conditions as the knowledge of a universal relation and understanding of the meaning of a proposition and so on. Hence pramāna is taken to mean the entire complex or collocation of all the specific physical and psychical conditions (bodhābodhasvabhāvā sāmaqrī) that are actually operative in bringing about valid and assured cognition of objects (pramā). This, however, does not include such universal conditions of all knowledge as subject and object, time and space, etc., within the compass of pramāna or the method of knowledge Hence the final definition of pramāna is that it is the complex of specific conditions, other than the subject and the object, which does not normally fail to produce valid knowledge 1
The Vaiseșika system defines pramana as the unique operative cause (karana) of both true presentational knowledge and memory ? It would take memory as a distinct pramāna or method of knowledge libe perception and infer ence. The Nyāya restriction of pramāna to the ground o presentational knowledge has been set aside and memory has been rightly shown to be an independent method o. knowledge by the Vaišesikas.'
The Jainas also take pramāna in a general sense so as to make it applicable to both immediate presentational knowledge (pratyakşa) and mediate knowledge (paroksa) so far as they are true. Under mediate knowledge they include sense-perception, inference, memory and recognition. In this general sense, pramāna is knowledge that reveals both itself and its object in a way that is not liable to contradiction.
1 Cf NM, p 15 2 surtyanubhavagadbāraṇam pramākaranam pramānam, TK, p. 6. 3 Vide infra, Bk V, Ch. XX, Sec. 4.