An Introduction to Indian Philosophy

by Satischandra Chatterjee

After perception comes anumāna or inference. Anumāna (anu—after, māna—knowledge) literally means a cognition or knowledge which follows some other knowledge. Take the following illustrations: 'The hill is fiery, because it smokes and whatever smokes is fiery;' 'Devadatta is mortal, because he is a man, and all men are mortal.' In the first example, we pass from the perception of smoke in the hill to the knowledge of the existence of fire in it, on the ground of our previous knowledge of the universal relation between smoke and fire. In the second example, we know the mortality of Devadatta. which is not now perceived, from the presence of manhood in him. Thus we see that inference is a process of reasoning in which we pass from the apprehension of some mark (liṅga) to that of something else, by virtue of a relation of invariable concomitance (vyāpti) between the two. As Dr. B.N. Seal puts it: 'Anumāna (inference) is the process of ascertaining, not by perception or direct observation, but through the instrumentality or medium of a mark, that a thing possesses a certain character.'15