  An example of Āryadeva’s demonstrating an inconsistency in a particular position is his critique of the view that there is a permanent self. He observes that since a permanent self could not undergo change, it could not be harmed or destroyed, and therefore it is inconsistent for those who believe in such a self to promote ethical guidelines against killing or harming others. While Āryadeva endeavors in some chapters to show the inconsistencies in a number of particular doctrines of the Sāṃkhya and Vaiśeṣika schools, in the fourteenth chapter he provides a paradigm of an argument that can be applied to any number of doctrinal positions. That paradigm, which is familiar to readers of Nāgārjuna and other Mādhyamikas, consists in showing that there is a problem in attributing a given predicate to a subject, and in attributing the negation of that predicate, and in attributing both the predicate and its negation, and in attributing neither the predicate nor its negation. For example, he argues that one cannot say that a pot is single, for it has many characteristics, such as color, shape, hardness, odor and so forth. It also cannot be said that the pot is many pots, because none of the individual characteristics is a pot. It cannot be said that the pot is a single whole with many characteristics, because some of its components are material and therefore capable of contact and location, while others, such as color and odor, are immaterial and have no location; it makes no sense to say that characteristics that have contrary natures form a coherent whole. And yet to deny that a pot is either one or many is to deny that it exists at all, for an existent thing must have either a property or the absence of that property. Āryadeva’s statements of these arguments in verse is laconic and often difficult to follow; therefore, most readers who study his text do so with the help of one of the many commentaries written by later Sanskrit or Tibetan authors. 