What are the pramāṇas, and how do the schools disagree about them?

Question

I grew up hearing words like "pramāṇa" in family discussions without really knowing what they meant. I've started reading Indian philosophy properly and keep running into lists of pramāṇas that differ between schools. What are they, and why does the number matter?

Meera Kulkarni · Accepted Answer

A pramāṇa is a means of valid knowledge: a way of coming to know something truly. The schools disagree about how many there are.
Cārvāka: perception only.Buddhists (Dignāga, Dharmakīrti) and Vaiśeṣika: perception and inference.Sāṃkhya and Yoga: perception, inference and testimony.Nyāya: those three plus comparison (upamāna), learning a word's meaning through similarity.Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā and Advaita Vedānta: six, adding postulation (arthāpatti, inferring what must be the case, like "fat Devadatta doesn't eat by day, so he eats at night") and non-perception (anupalabdhi, knowing absence).
The number matters because each school's metaphysics depends on what it allows to count as knowledge. If testimony is a pramāṇa, the Vedas can be a source of knowledge about things you can't perceive, which is why the Cārvākas rejected it.

Vikram Sethi · Answer

The "fat Devadatta" example is my favourite in all of Indian philosophy. I use it in class to teach inference to the best explanation.

Rohan Desai · Answer

This is exactly what I needed, Meera. So the list of pramāṇas is basically a school's theory of evidence. That makes the arguments between schools much easier to follow.

What are the pramāṇas, and how do the schools disagree about them?

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