Pramāṇa

A pramāṇa is a means by which a philosophical system establishes reliable knowledge. Indian traditions differ over which means qualify and how each produces knowledge.

Pramā: A true cognition that is not produced by memory or error. Pramāṇa names the means; pramā is the resulting reliable cognition.
Nyāya: An Indian philosophical school that develops logic, epistemology, and theories of debate. Nyāya recognizes four pramāṇas and analyzes how each produces valid cognition.
Indriya: A sense faculty, such as sight or hearing, through which sensory cognition occurs. Sense faculties supply the contact involved in many accounts of perception.
Nyāya Sūtra: A foundational text of Nyāya philosophy attributed to Akṣapāda Gautama. Its opening analysis defines knowledge, error, debate, and the four Nyāya pramāṇas.
Hetvābhāsa: A fallacious reason that appears to support an inference but fails to establish its conclusion. Classifying defective signs helps distinguish genuine inferential knowledge from apparent proof.
Pramātṛ: The knower or subject who apprehends an object. The knower is one element in accounts of how reliable cognition arises.
Mīmāṃsā: An Indian philosophical tradition focused on Vedic interpretation, ritual, and language. Mīmāṃsā defends the authority of Vedic testimony and generally accepts six pramāṇas.
Sannikarṣa: The relation of contact between a sense faculty and an object in Nyāya theories of perception. Nyāya uses kinds of contact to explain how perception reaches qualities and universals.
Dignāga: A Buddhist philosopher who systematized a theory of perception and inference. His work recast pramāṇa theory around two means and influenced later Buddhist logic.
Anupalabdhi: Non-apprehension treated by some schools as a means of knowing that something is absent. Its debates test whether absence is perceived directly or established through another means.

Linked from 18 pages