One reason that bitextuality resists explanation is that the multiple “registers” (ways of reading the text), such as the story of the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata mentioned above, are not merely two distinct sets of unrelated meanings. Rather, similes or metaphors frequently connect the readings. For instance, Dhanañjaya’s “Poem of Two Targets,” through setting the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata “side-by-side” allows the reader to contrast the protagonists of the two epics (Bronner 2010: 110). Further, even where such relationships are not obvious, given the important principle that non-literal utterances must be supported by some warrant, whether conventional or due to speaker aims, most Sanskrit thinkers argued that no one would utter a sentence with two meanings that are unrelated. Mahima Bhaṭṭa (11th century CE), in his Analysis of “Manifestation” (Vyaktiviveka), argues that paranomasia, as a kind of meaning, must be coherent in the sense of having semantic fit, even if, as a kind of secondary meaning, there are cues which lead the reader to go beyond the strictly literal sense. However, unlike cases of metaphor, where there is an obstacle to semantic fit, as in “Devadatta is a lion,” bitextuality requires that there be (at least) two sets of coherent meanings which have semantic fit and also that there be a way to bring both meanings together. Further, since the trigger for bitextuality cannot be a failure of semantic fit, there must be some cue other than just the mere possibility of reading a sentence in two ways (McCrea 2008). Ānandavardhana, however, who comes two centuries before Mahima Bhaṭṭa, argues that there may be bitextual poems in which two sets of meanings do not cause a further metaphor or simile (Bronner 2010: 204; McCrea 2008: 434).