4. Gyan Mimansa or Epistemology of the Darshans

I think before we get into the details of various philosophies, it is very important to understand the epistemology or the theory of knowledge or also called in Sanskrit - Gyan Mimansa. Gyan Mimansa deals with the process of acquisition of knowledge. How does the specific philosophy define its methods of acquisition of knowledge. In Indian Philosophy, these methods are called pramaan or pramana or in English, evidence. The evidences are known methods of acquiring knowledge. In India philosophy, there are six fundamental pramaan or evidences - each of the darshans, either aligns to 1 or more out of these six.

The top three where there is a general consensus are pratakshya pramaan (perception), anumaan pramaan (inference) and shabd pramaan (testimony). The other three are unmaan pramaan (comparison), anupalabdhi pramaan (non-perception) and arthapatti pramaan (postulation, deduction).

Pratakshya pramaan is about interacting with the objects directly using the 5 senses of touch, sight, smell, taste and hearing. Basically believe anything you can experience and nothing else. This also means not believing what one has not experienced. In itself, it can be limited and confusing. 

For e.g., if I haven’t been out of my country, I will, with the above logic not believe that other countries exist, or at night, I might think of a rope as a snake and react to the rope as I react to a snake. So pratakshya pramaan in itself might not be always very complete, but it is definitely the most powerful of the pramaans. 

Anumaan pramaan, as the name suggests deals with the drawing an inference. For e.g. if I wake up in the morning and see that the ground outside is wet, there are some dark clouds and some places are water clogged, I can infer safely that it might have rained some time before I woke up. Another simple example, is that if I see light and smoke coming from someplace, it is fair to infer that there might be fire burning causing this. Anumaan pramaan is considered to be the second bedrock of the evidences for gaining knowledge.

Shabd pramaan or testimony is another of the top three which most darshans have agreed are important way to acquire knowledge. Testimony means taking the word of experts and learning from them. They can be exerts in their fields, teachers, books, other scripts like Buddha scriptures or Vedas. This also means that based on the above example for praktshya pramaan, if one has not visited any other country, they can listen about it from someone who has been there and as someone who has superior knowledge, can be a great way to acquire knowledge.

The first three are more or less self-explanatory and very logical to follow. There are three more which requires some thinking and creativity. 

Upmaan pramaan is gaining knowledge by comparing, simile or as it is called in Sanskrit, upma. For people who have read Kalidas, they will know that Kalidas is considered to be superlative when it comes to Upma, it’s said Upma Kalidasasya, means “simile should be like Kalidas writes”. 

The process of knowledge gaining here is my comparison to a known object and drawing parallels to the unknown. For e.g. if someone wants a landmark for reaching a place, one can describe - “there is a building there of similar colour like the ping building in our locality, but that other building is much smaller, only 4 storeys compared to 20 storeys building in our locality, and like there pink building in our locality, it also has external staircase on the side”. Now this description can help the person find the landmark where they want to go as they can start with first finding that building which has been described.

The comparison to something known provides the guidance to find the right knowledge.

Anupalabdhi pramaan is something which is conspicuous by not being there. The cricket matches during pandemic had no crowds, lack of crowds during a T20 match provides knowledge of the seriousness of the pandemic.

The last, but not the least is the Arthapatti pramaan. Arthapatti deals with deduction or derivation of information based on data. If we say that all stars generate heat and the Sun is a star, then it can be deduced that the Sun must be generating heat as well. Another example here is that if a person is awake all night as they work at night, then it's a safe deduction that they might be catching up on their sleep during the day or if Prakash is the son of Dr Banerjee but Dr Banerjee is not Prakash’s father, then its fair to say that Dr Banerjee must be Prakash’s mother.

Various darshans accept Arthapatti as a valid way of gaining knowledge.

We will go in more details on pramaan when we get in details of each of the darshans but just summarising here a bit.

• According to Sankhya, Yog and Vedanta (some sub-schools from Vedanta), acknowledge their epistemology to be through Pratakshya, Anumaan and Shabd pramaans.
• Even Nyaya believes the means of acquiring knowledge through Pratakshya, Anumaan, Shabd pramaan, but adds Upmaan or comparison as the fourth means of acquiring knowledge.
• Vaisheshik darshan acknowledges only two means of acquiring knowledge through Pratakshya and Anumaan. Although they also acknowledge in the Vedic teachings and word of Vedas. Buddhist philosophy has similar belief when it comes to pramaans as Vaisheshik darshan, and although they do not believe in the word of vedas, they believe in buddhist scriptures and what has been written by Gautam Buddha and other gurus.
• Adwait Vedanta and Mimansa darshans acknowledge all six pramaans for gaining knowledge.
• There is only one darshan which believes in only one pramaan. That darshan is Charwaka darshan and they believe only in pratakshya pramaan.
• Jain darshan has a very details epistemology but it is slightly different than the above, we will discuss it when we get into those details.