ABSTRACT
Should the problems of epistemology be settled before the questions of metaphysics and practical applications of philosophical learning are dealt with, so that our knowledge that pertains to such matters may be established on firmer foundations and not on false understanding? The adage pramāṇādhīnā prameya-sthitiḥ (EIP 1977, 8) sums up the direction in which this quandary is resolved, namely, that the firmness of the objects of knowledge is supervenient on the reliable means of cognition. In the minds of the ancients, the discussion of epistemology and logic preceded much in the manner we count as being of philosophical and theological interest. Questions relevant for any theory of knowledge to be viable are raised within the ambience of the branch of thought that came to be known as pramāṇa-śāstra, whose closest equivalence in the West is ‘epistemology’.
