UGC NET Questions (Paper – 1)

Arthāpatti is invoked when two accepted facts seem inconsistent unless a new, unobserved fact is assumed. For example, if a person is known to be alive and yet never seen eating in the day, one postulates that they eat at night. This postulated connecting fact is not straightforwardly perceived or inferred in the usual way but is taken as a distinct mode of valid cognition. Thus, arthāpatti is treated as an independent pramāṇa by schools that accept it.

Option A:
Option A would make arthāpatti indistinguishable from perception, which contradicts the emphasis on postulating something not directly seen.

Option B:
Option B resembles upamāna, where similarity between things gives new knowledge, but arthāpatti resolves clashes between known facts rather than relying on likeness.

Option C:
Option C correctly characterises arthāpatti as a special kind of reasoning where an unobserved fact is posited to maintain coherence among accepted data.

Option D:
Option D associates the pramāṇa with purely negative instances, which is more relevant to certain inferences or to absence cognition than to arthāpatti specifically.