Means of Knowledge (Pramāṇa)

Pramāṇa is one of the great organizing ideas of Indian philosophy: a 'valid means of knowledge,' a reliable route by which we come to know what is true. Schools build their whole systems on which means they accept — perception, inference, and the testimony of trustworthy words being the most widely admitted. Debates over the pramāṇas are how Indian thinkers argued about evidence, reason, and the authority of scripture.