---
type: Concept
bundle: nyaya-vaisheshika
bundle_version: 0.9.0
id: tarka
title: Tarka
iast: Tarka
devanagari: तर्क
description: Suppositional or counterfactual reasoning that defends a pervasion by showing its denial leads to absurdity; an auxiliary that secures inference, not itself a pramāṇa; NOT 'logic' in the generic sense, NOT debate, NOT sophistry.
darshana:
- Nyāya
text_source: Nyāya Sūtra 1.1.40
tags:
- tarka
- suppositional-reasoning
- reductio
- nyaya
- vyapti
not:
- term: logic in general (the whole discipline)
  why: 'English often renders tarka as ''logic'', and Tarka-śāstra as ''the science of logic'', but within the system tarka is one specific instrument: hypothetical reasoning that tests a pervasion by assuming its opposite. The discipline as a whole is ānvīkṣikī or Nyāya; tarka is a tool inside it.'
  instead: 'Define tarka narrowly as counterfactual testing: ''if there were smoke here without fire, then...'', driving the denial of a vyāpti to an unacceptable consequence, thereby protecting the inference.'
- term: a pramāṇa (an independent source of knowledge)
  why: Tarka does not by itself yield new knowledge of an object; it removes doubt and supports a vyāpti so that a pramāṇa can operate. Nyāya is explicit that tarka is an aid to the pramāṇas, not a fifth one.
- term: sophistry or mere argumentation
  why: Tarka is disciplined reductio in the service of truth, not clever wrangling. The victory-seeking forms of argument have their own names (jalpa, vitaṇḍā); tarka is the honest instrument that keeps inference from resting on an untested generalization.
related:
- /concepts/vyapti.md
- /concepts/anumana.md
- /concepts/shodasha-padartha.md
- /concepts/vada.md
timestamp: '2026-07-02'
okf_version: '0.2'
license: CC BY-SA 4.0
---

# Tarka -- तर्क

**Not:** logic in general, a pramāṇa, sophistry

## What It Actually Means

Tarka is Nyāya's counterfactual instrument. Faced with a doubt about whether a pervasion truly holds, one entertains its denial and follows the consequence: if smoke could occur without fire, then the observed tie between them would be inexplicable and much else we know would unravel; since that consequence is unacceptable, the pervasion stands. Tarka thus does not generate fresh knowledge of an object the way perception or inference does; it clears away doubt and shores up the vyāpti on which an inference depends. That is why Nyāya lists it among the sixteen categories as a distinct item yet denies it the status of a pramāṇa. It is also, tellingly, one of the words most flattened in translation: rendered as 'logic', it loses its precise job as the reductio that guards a pervasion.

## Audience Metaphor

Before trusting a rope bridge, you do not just admire that it holds; you lean hard the wrong way to see if it gives. Tarka is that deliberate lean against a belief: suppose the opposite were true, where does it snap? If assuming the denial breaks everything, the plank holds. It builds nothing new; it stress-tests what inference is about to stand on.

## Citations

1. Nyāya Sūtra 1.1.40 (tarka among the sixteen categories) -- see [references/nyaya-sutra.md](../references/nyaya-sutra.md)
2. Jayanta Bhaṭṭa, Nyāyamañjarī, on tarka as an aid to the pramāṇas -- see [references/nyayamanjari.md](../references/nyayamanjari.md)
3. Annambhaṭṭa, Tarkasaṃgraha -- see [references/tarkasamgraha.md](../references/tarkasamgraha.md)
