 Naiyāyikas and Mīmāṃsakas, the common sense realists, raise specific objections to the Grammarian view on the grounds that it is not borne by experience. We have separate awarenesses of words and universals. While we may not perceive something as a cow prior to acquiring the word ‘cow,’ we are surely aware of cowness before we acquire the linguistic expression, just as we are aware of and can discriminate shades of red even before we acquire the names of some of those shades. A non-conceptual awareness of the object is implied by the subsequent occurrence of a conceptual awareness with determinate content. Kumārila also points to other phenomena which indicate that the awareness of the meaning of a word (the object) is independent and distinct from the word itself. Furthermore, awareness of the meaning and that of the word are usually different kinds of representations; there is no possibility of confusing or conflating these. Kumārila brings to attention linguistic phenomena that reinforce the point that words and meanings must be distinct representations, e.g., homonymy, synonymy, categorizing and recognizing grammatical parts of speech, etc. The ability to distinguish and discriminate types is perhaps enhanced by knowledge of language and concepts, but is not completely dependent on it. Those who are not trained in music can certainly hear the difference between distinct notes, even though they are unable to identify them by name. Vātsyāyana also appeals to the ordinary experience of people who are conversant with words. Ordinarily, words are apprehended as names of objects. The knowledge of the word-object association comes after the perceptual knowledge derived through sense-object contact. Such contact results in a perceptual awareness which, in turn, provides the occasion for recalling the appropriate word, if indeed the appropriate word exists in the experiencer’s linguistic repertoire. Perceptual knowledge is antecedent to verbal knowledge and cannot owe its existence to words. Vācaspati Miśra specifically objects to Bhartṛhari’s claim that infants and adults who lack a language perceive objects by memory impressions of their names from previous births. Objects are vividly and clearly given to us in perception, but the memory-impressions of previous births are at best vague and indistinct. Vācaspati Miśra asks, “How can such a vague and unclear thing be identified with a clear and distinct perception?” (Nyāyavārttikatātparyaṭīkā, 127). His other argument against Bhartṛhari is the obvious point that words do not necessarily refer to their objects, for example words in quotation marks do not refer to objects, only to themselves. Moreover, if the word and its denotation were identical, a blind man would grasp red or redness when he grasps the word ‘red’ and a deaf person would grasp the word ‘red’ when he grasps a red thing (Nyāyavārttikatātparyaṭīkā, 129).