Prameya

Prameya (T. གཞལ་བྱ་) is translated as "object of comprehension," "object of right cognition," "comprehensible phenomena," "epistemic object," etc. It is defined as an "object of comprehension by a valid cognizer."

The Princeton Dictionary states:

Dharmakīrti states in his Pramāṇavārttika that there are two forms of valid knowledge (pramāṇa) because there are two objects of comprehension (prameya). The two types of objects are the manifest (abhimukhī) and the hidden (paroksa), with the former referring to objects that can be known through direct sense perception, the latter referring to those things that can be known only through inference.

Prameya is one of the sixteen categories of the Nyaya school.

Relationship between pramana and prameya

In Crushing the Categories, Nagarjuna states:

The epistemic instrument and epistemic object are both interlinked.

Jan Westerhoff explains this statement as follows:

Nāgārjuna begins his discussion of the first two Nyāya categories, epistemic instruments and epistemic objects, by pointing out their mutual dependence.

Such dependence is far from obvious, since at least prima facie these two categories involve very different kinds of things. One contains the means by which we gain knowledge of the world, the instruments by which objects are represented in our mind, and the other the objects themselves, the furniture of the world that is the subject-matter about which information is conveyed to us via the instruments. Drawing an analogy from the case of carpentry, if we put all the instruments (saw, hammer, screwdriver, etc.) into one group, and all the objects operated upon (wood, nails, screws, etc.) into another, we do not end up with two groups depending on each other. Both the tools of the trade as well as the raw materials seem to exist quite separately from each other.

[...]

Yet as the instruments of carpentry only become instruments by there being some raw materials they can operate on, and as the raw materials only become raw materials fit for a certain kind of assembly (rather than random chunks of matter), if there are instruments that can so assemble them, the epistemic instruments and objects bring each other into existence. Only if there is something we can have epistemic access to does it make sense to speak of epistemic instruments that make such access possible, and only if there are ways of epistemically connecting with the world could we have objects of knowledge (rather than, e.g., noumenal objects entirely beyond our cognitive powers).

Sources

• Buswell, Robert E.; Lopez, Donald S. (2014), The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, Princeton University 
• Nagarjuna (2018), Crushing the Categories (Vaidalyaprakarana), translated by Westerhoff, Jan, Wisdom Publications