Indian philosophy, the orthodox schools · c. 2nd c. CE (text)
Nyaya
Overview
Knowledge is earned by reliable means: perception, inference, comparison and testimony. Logic is how an error gets a name.
Nyaya is the school that asks how a claim earns the right to be believed. Akshapada Gautama sorts the reliable means into a short list: perception, inference, comparison and testimony. A hunch, a loud voice and a story you like are not on the list. If a belief cannot be traced to one of the means, it has not yet been earned.
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Inference, in this school, is not a bare “therefore.” You are expected to show the pattern with a case someone can check. Later logicians, the Buddhist Dignaga first among them, sharpened this into a three-part test that Nyaya argued with for centuries: the reason has to be present in the case you are judging, present in a similar example, and absent where the conclusion would be false. An argument that cannot survive an example is not yet an argument.
The school’s final aim is liberation, reached through right knowledge. Along the way the aim is freedom from error, not a pile of clever wins. A person who can name which means they are using can also name when they have none. That admission is part of the method. Nyaya treats a well-formed doubt as progress, and a decorated certainty as the thing to be cut.
Where it answers
What is valid reasoning?
A claim earns its way by a reliable means: what was perceived, what follows and who is in a position to say.
How do we know?
Knowledge comes through reliable means: perception, inference, comparison and trustworthy testimony.
Key terms
- Pramana
- A valid means of knowledge, such as perception, inference, comparison or testimony.
- Perception
- Knowledge from contact between the senses and their objects.
- Inference
- Knowing something by a sign, as smoke on a hill tells you there is fire.
- Fallacies (hetvabhasa)
- “Seeming reasons”: signs that look like evidence but fail.
Further reading
- Nyaya Sutras · Akshapada Gautama
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Quest2Reason. “Nyaya.” https://quest2reason.com/learn/ideas/nyaya. Accessed 13 November 2026.