Aesthetic thinkers, especially beginning with Ānandavardhana (ca 9th century CE), focus on distinctions between the capacities of language. Ānandavardhana himself is primarily concerned to defend the existence of a new linguistic capacity, suggestion (on which see section 3 below). With illustrations drawn from poetry, drama, and the epic Mahābhārata, he argues that phonemes, words, sentences, and entire discourse units can suggest subtle meanings, associated with an aestheticized emotion or “flavor” (rasa). It is up to later philosophers of aesthetics to explain the status of suggestion with regard to the ordinary categories of linguistic capacities. Some, like Mukula Bhaṭṭa (ca 9th to 10th century CE) give a reductionist account on which it is equivalent to indication, whereas others, like Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka (ca 900 CE) deny that it is a linguistic capacity at all, but argue, rather, that it is psychological. Aesthetic arguments for and against the various linguistic capacities draw on Nyāya as well as Mīmāṃsā philosophical texts.