Bhatta Mimamsa six pramanas – UGC NET Question

Bhatta Mimamsa extends the pramana list to six by adding arthapatti and anupalabdhi to the more common four. They argue that certain kinds of knowledge, such as awareness of absence, cannot be reduced to perception or inference alone. This expansion is tied to their concern with interpreting Vedic injunctions and ritual prescriptions accurately. Therefore the standard count of pramanas in Bhatta Mimamsa is six.

Option A:
Option A, three, would drastically understate the epistemic resources recognised in Bhatta Mimamsa and ignore their elaborate arguments for additional pramanas. It would conflate them with schools like Samkhya that have a more restrictive list.

Option B:
Option B, four, corresponds to classical Nyaya but fails to capture the distinctive Mimamsa claim about arthapatti and anupalabdhi. Mimamsakas see these extra pramanas as necessary for explaining certain kinds of Vedic and empirical knowledge.

Option C:
Option C, five, would still omit one of the two special pramanas championed by this school. While some philosophers accept five, the Bhatta position is characteristically six.

Option D:
Option D is correct because Bhatta Mimamsa explicitly enumerates six pramanas to secure a comprehensive account of both worldly and scriptural cognition.