 The idea is that the meaning of the word ‘cow’ is a negation: not non-cow. If you exclude all the things that are not cows, you have the reference of the word ‘cow’. The Hindus, in particular the Nyāya philosopher Uddyotakara and the Mīmāṃsā philosopher Kumārila raise many epistemological and metaphysical objections to Dignāga’s apohavada. The basic problem metaphysical problem is how to understand apoha as a non-existence. Both the Hindu schools regard non-existence as a real property of a thing (absence of a pot in a room) and therefore are not convinced that by introducing apohas the Buddhist will be able to ultimately avoid reference to universals. The epistemological issues concern how it is possible to know apohas as they cannot be known by perception and any appeal to inference would be circular. These philosophers also raise linguistic concerns that are important because the apoha doctrine does double duty as a Buddhist theory of meaning. First, since apoha is basically an absence, the meanings of all words would be synonymous. Second, how is it possible to learn which apoha a word refers to?