Reflections on the Sources of Knowledge in the Indian Tradition

Abstract

The various ideas about the sources or instruments of knowledge in the different schools or darśana-s in the Indian philosophical tradition suggest questions to those raised in the Western tradition. The fact that there is a considerable overlap of theory and argument should not blind us to the ways in which certain key notions are so diversely conceived. The pramānṇa-s, which I shall here translate as “sources of knowledge” (Potter, though, for instance, prefers “instruments of knowledge”), not only include perception and inference, but also interesting variants such as negative perception (that is, the perception of the absence of something) and analogy or perceptual recognition based in part on prior verbal testimony. The most striking difference from typical Western treatments of epistemology is the inclusion of this last.