 However, the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika philosopher has a stock response to the regress argument Śrīharṣa uses to motivate his view: it is to posit a self-linking relation (svarūpa-sambandha). The underlying thought is that sometimes, when one entity a is related to another entity b, this state of affairs isn’t decomposable into three elements which are distinct from each other, i.e., a, b, and a relation R that is distinct from both a and b. Rather, the relation R may just be non-distinct from either a or b. Yet, since it connects a or b to something else, it still remains a relation; it is thus a self-linking relation. This will block the regress argument that Śrīharṣa wishes to run. In The Discrimination of the Truth about the Self (Ātmatattvaviveka), Udayana endorses a view of this kind (Śāstri 1940: 224).