---
type: Concept
bundle: nyaya-vaisheshika
bundle_version: 0.9.0
id: anumana
title: Anumāna
iast: Anumāna
devanagari: अनुमान
description: Inference as a knowledge-yielding movement of cognition from a perceived mark to what it invariably pervades, grounded in vyāpti and displayed in five members; NOT the Aristotelian syllogism, NOT a purely formal deduction over propositions, NOT probable guessing.
darshana:
- Nyāya
- Vaiśeṣika
school_scope: 'Treated here from its source school, where inference is a full pramāṇa yielding certainty. vedanta-epistemology v0.3 covers anumāna within Advaita, where inference is finally subordinate to śabda and cannot by itself reach the non-dual. The two entries are school-scoped and cross-linked, not duplicates: same word, different darśana.'
text_source: Nyāya Sūtra 1.1.5
tags:
- anumana
- inference
- nyaya
- pramana
- vyapti
not:
- term: the Aristotelian syllogism (a three-term deduction over propositions)
  why: 'The five-membered nyāya states cognitions, not propositions, and carries a real example (udāharaṇa) that grounds the rule in observed cases; it fuses the deductive and the evidential where the syllogism keeps formal validity separate from epistemic grounding. Matilal''s point: mapping one onto the other confuses cognition with proposition.'
  instead: 'Present anumāna as a movement of knowing: from a mark seen in a case, through a pervasion known to hold, to a warranted conclusion about that case, delivered as knowledge, not merely valid in form.'
- term: a purely formal deduction (truth-preserving over any content)
  why: Nyāya inference is not content-neutral. Vyāpti is an invariable concomitance in the world, established by observation and the failure to find counter-instances, not a rule true by syntax. Strip the epistemic grounding and it is no longer anumāna.
- term: probable inference or educated guessing
  why: A sound anumāna yields pramā (knowledge), not probability. With a true vyāpti and a genuine mark it delivers certainty about its object; the fallibility lives in the pseudo-marks (hetvābhāsa), not in the form being merely likely.
related:
- /concepts/vyapti.md
- /concepts/panchavayava.md
- /concepts/hetu.md
- /concepts/pramana.md
timestamp: '2026-07-02'
okf_version: '0.2'
license: CC BY-SA 4.0
---

# Anumāna -- अनुमान

**Not:** the syllogism, formal deduction, probable guessing

## What It Actually Means

Anumāna is the second pramāṇa and the engine of Nyāya reasoning. Its stock example: one sees smoke on a hill (the mark), knows that wherever there is smoke there is fire (the pervasion, established from kitchens and never falsified), and so knows there is fire on the hill. The inference is not a manipulation of sentences but a movement of cognition: a mark, apprehended in a subject, carries the mind to the pervaded property. A mark is probative only under strict conditions, chiefly that it genuinely belongs to the subject, is present in like cases, and is absent from every unlike case. Because the warrant runs through vyāpti, a real feature of the world, anumāna delivers knowledge of a mind-independent object, not a formally valid string.

## Audience Metaphor

A syllogism is a calculator: feed it the right form and it returns a valid answer regardless of what the symbols mean. Anumāna is a tracker reading smoke on a ridge: the conclusion is only as good as the tracker's knowledge that this sign never comes without that fire, knowledge earned in the field, not proved on paper. The tracker is not computing; the tracker is knowing.

## Citations

1. Nyāya Sūtra 1.1.5 with Vātsyāyana's Bhāṣya -- see [references/nyaya-sutra.md](../references/nyaya-sutra.md) and [references/nyaya-bhashya.md](../references/nyaya-bhashya.md)
2. Annambhaṭṭa, Tarkasaṃgraha (the standard primer on the anumāna apparatus) -- see [references/tarkasamgraha.md](../references/tarkasamgraha.md)
3. Cross-bundle: anumāna in vedanta-epistemology v0.3 -- the Advaita treatment, school-scoped and reciprocally linked; same term, different darśana
