 Secondly, and perhaps more decisively, the kinds or universals that we think and talk about are not features of the particulars themselves but are merely fictions. Of course, the fact that we do use terms like “cow” non-arbitrarily may easily lead us to think that the term must have corresponding real “grounds for its application” (pravṛttinimitta), and that cow particulars themselves are grouped in a natural kind due to their common essential properties. But the clear upshot of the Buddhist’s nominalist position about universals is that there are no such natural kinds, and that the usage of terms is not explicable by matching up terms with them.