 Lakṣaṇā’s indirect implication employs a theory of metonymy which distinguishes between literal denotative meanings and implied connotative meanings. The contradictory juxtaposition of an identity statement such as “You are that” triggers a particular form of secondary implication in which a portion of the primary meaning is rejected while another part is retained. The canonical Advaita example is, “This (person that you see now) is that Devadatta (whom you knew in the past)”. Here, the primary referents of “this” and “that” cannot be identical because “this” and “that” refer to different locations and times, Devadatta in the past somewhere else and Devadatta here and now. The two Devadattas are not completely identical because of their relationships to time and place, nor are they completely separate. The import of the sentence creates a cognition of a single Devadatta substantive that is not connected to a specific time or place. (See Lipner 1997; Bartley 2002: 111–23; Suthren Hirst 2005: 145–51; Kunjunni Raja 1969: 251–54, and the entry on the  literal-nonliteral distinction  for further discussions of indirect implication).