Nyāya approaches what is commonly called “karma” through a rigorously causal and epistemological lens, speaking more precisely of adṛṣṭa—the “unseen” potency—and of dharma and adharma, merit and demerit, that inhere in the self. Every intentional, especially morally charged, action is said to leave a subtle, imperceptible disposition in the self (ātman). This disposition is not directly available to the senses, yet it is treated as real because it can be logically inferred from its patterned effects. Pleasure and pain, prosperity and suffering, particular circumstances of birth and life—these are all understood as the fruits of such unseen potencies. Nothing in the moral order is regarded as sheer accident; rather, the Nyāya thinker sees an intelligible chain of causes, some visible and some hidden, linking deed and consequence across time.

Because Nyāya is deeply concerned with valid means of knowledge, this unseen causal factor is not accepted on faith alone but is grounded in anumāna, inference. When the moral texture of experience displays an order that cannot be fully explained by observable causes in the present life, the mind is led to posit adṛṣṭa as the missing link. The self, which is distinct from body and mind and without beginning, carries these subtle potencies from one embodiment to another, thereby accounting for rebirth and the continuity of moral consequences. In this way, the doctrine of karma is woven into a larger realist metaphysics of enduring selves and causal connections.

A distinctive feature of the Nyāya account is the role assigned to Īśvara, the supreme Lord, in the administration of karmic results. Karma is not treated as a blind, automatic mechanism; rather, Īśvara is described as the intelligent arranger who knows the full ledger of each being’s dharma and adharma and links actions to their appropriate fruits. The moral law thus operates under divine oversight, ensuring that the distribution of pleasure and pain, reward and suffering, is just and orderly. The universe is seen as a moral cosmos in which God’s omniscience and justice provide the overarching framework within which adṛṣṭa can bear fruit.

Within this vision, bondage arises so long as actions rooted in ignorance continue to generate new adṛṣṭa that binds the self to the cycle of birth and death. Nyāya therefore emphasizes right knowledge—secured through perception, inference, comparison, and trustworthy testimony—together with ethical conduct and devotion to Īśvara, as the means to gradually exhaust accumulated adṛṣṭa and prevent the formation of new, binding dispositions. When ignorance is dispelled and the stock of such karmic potencies is brought to an end, the self attains apavarga, liberation characterized by the cessation of suffering and of further karmic fruition. In this way, the path of logic and epistemic clarity is not merely an intellectual exercise, but a disciplined means of disentangling the self from the unseen threads of its own past actions.