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NYAYA AND JAINA EPISTEMOLOGY
embodying negative judgement, such as-That is not the animal signified by the word cow'. Such cognitions based on dissimilarity lead to definition exactly in the same way as the knowledge based on similarity. As it is said "The Jainas take the right course by bringing all forms of knowledge negative or positive which cansist in comparison and synthesis under the one allembracing pratyabhijñā or conception".3
Nyāya view regarding Tarka Hypothetical Reasoning-Tarka
In Nyāya, Tarka is not considered as a form of valid knowledge. Tarka is an indirect argument, i. e. reductio ad absurdum. In this reasoning employed is of implicative form. We take the contradictory of given conclusion and if it is true, the argument is invalid; if false, it is valid. It is also called hypothetical reasoning, e. g. "If there were no fire, there would be no smoke". Here tarka indicates the inference of fire as valid by deducing an inadmissible proposition from the contradictory of conclusion.
This kind of argument is useful for establishing a proposition which is doubted. Tarka, therefore, serves limit to dispute. It helps to decide between two possible alternatives. But it is not regarded as pramāņa in Nyāya because the invalidity of a position is not a ground of the validity of its opposite. so tarka is not a source of valid knowledge by itself but it is auxiliary to pramāṇa because to argue that if there were no fire, there would be no smoke' is not to know that there is fire. Hence tarka does not generate true knowledge, although it confirms a pramāṇa which actually generates the knowledge in question.
