Gaudiya Vaishnavism: The Epistemology Of The Six Orthodox Schools Of Generations

From my personal experience and interactions with babies and young children I have found many fascinating circumstances in which little kids speak or display acts that resemble the people that they are most associated with on a daily basis. This made me realise that kids are so impressionable, but more importantly that they learn from our example. What they hear, what they see, what they feel all contribute to their learning processes and growth in knowledge and skills. This may seem as such a basic example, but it is how we all have grown in my opinion. There are many philosophies of the eastern and western worlds that explain the meaning of life, creation, the world and even the nature of beings. What is profound however, is that they first put
Firstly, I will be looking at Nyaya epistemology, thereafter the epistemology of the Vaisesika school and lastly before concluding compare these epistemologies to that of Gaudiya Vaishnavism.
Nyaya philosophy is one of the six orthodox schools of Hinduism. They have made major contributions to theories of logic, methodology and epistemology. The Nyaya school has four methods of obtaining knowledge which they feel to be the proper means of obtaining knowledge i.e. perception, inference, comparison/analogy, and testimony from reliable sources. All four methods are accepted but perception is seen as the ultimate source of such knowledge. These Nyaya theories where put together and developed into their pramana sastra, ‘means of knowledge’ (Phillips, 2012, 1-13). Perception, being the topmost level, is of two types i.e. ordinary and extraordinary (intuition and other supernatural means). Ordinary perception is based on the direct experience of one’s eyes, ears, nose, touch and taste, with the world. This form of perception according to them is faultless. Akṣapāda Gautama in his Nyaya Sutra (I,i.4) states that this perception is 'non-erroneous cognition which is produced by the intercourse