Yogacara Epistemology and Buddhist Logic

Because Yogacara grounds the reality of external objects in the internal structure of cognition itself, the school had a strong internal motive to develop a precise, technical theory of pramana, "valid means of knowledge" or "instruments of knowledge" — a term shared with, and contested against, the rival Brahmanical schools of Nyaya and Mimamsa, which had already developed sophisticated theories of perception, inference, verbal testimony, and other epistemic instruments. Rather than simply borrowing Brahmanical categories, Yogacara-affiliated logicians constructed a distinctively Buddhist epistemology built on the ontological commitments of the school: since only momentary particulars (svalaksana) are held to be ultimately real, while the general concepts (samanyalaksana) that make communication and inference possible are mental constructions, Buddhist epistemology needed to explain how thought and language, operating entirely through general concepts, could nonetheless track and successfully act upon a world composed only of unrepeatable, momentary particulars.