26. The Pramanas of Hindu Logic. 



By Professor Vanamali Chakravartti, M.A., 



Vedantatirtha, Vedantaratna. 



The pramanas are usually translated as " instrumeDts of 

 knowledge," " channels of evidential knowledge " or " authori- 

 tative evidences." The first of these renderings approaches 

 nearest the original. The Nyayavartika of Uddyotakara defines 



it thus : — ^wfaf%7j: wnPJ, i.e. " A pramana is a cause or 



condition of knowledge or cognition." According to this defi- 

 nition, a pramana is more a thing of psychology than of logic. 

 That which serves to give us knowledge is a pramana. The 

 pramanas are, so to say, the windows of the mind, through 

 which the objective world communicates its existence to us. I 

 have a suspicion that the philosophical consciousness of India 

 never made any sharp distinction between this, the psycho- 

 logical sense of the word pramana and its logical sense. In fact, 

 Logic and Psychology as two separate studies, the one being 

 conceived as a regulative and the other as a natural science, 

 never did exist on Indian soil. The Hindu thinker asked, how 

 do we know the world? The ordinary answer was : — (1) by 

 observation (pratyaksa), (2) by reasoning (anumana), and (3) 

 by authority (gabda). If now the further question be raised, 

 u Does all the knowledge thus derived correspond to reality ? If 

 not, by what criterion or standard is true knowledge to be dis- 

 tinguished from the false ?" one steps into the domain of Logic. 

 The question with the logician is, not how we actually know 

 the world, but how we know it correctly or truly. What are 

 the instruments of right or valid knowledge ? Thus pramana , 

 in a logical sense, may be translated " instruments of right 

 knowledge," and in this sense " channels of evidential know- 

 ledge " or " authoritative evidences " may be better. 



That the pramanas, as ordinarily conceived, are more 

 psychological than logical, will also be evident from the 

 statements of the neo-logicians such as the following : 



Bhasapariccheda , 131. 



Translation. — False cognition is produced by the faults 

 and true cognition by the excellences. There are various kinds 

 of faults, such as bile, distance and the like. 1 



1 A man suffering from jaundice will perceive the white conch 

 shell to be yellow. This is sense-perception, its defective character is 



