12. Dignāga discusses these three in a deliberate effort to (1) reduce the five parts that the Hindu Nyaya school held were involved in any proper cognition (agent, object, instrument, action, and result) to only three parts, and (2) argue that despite the fact that the word pramānṃa grammatically indicates an instrument, that usage is only metaphoric for what is actually the consequence or result (phala) of the process of knowing, namely, coming to know the intended object (artha), so that “knowing” is actually pramānṃa-phala, the effect of the pramānṃa process. The “instrument” or means of knowledge is a secondary, conceptual abstraction; pramānṃa, therefore, properly speaking, refers to the act of knowing, not the means.