 He draws a distinction between perceptual cognition and constructive cognition, but is careful to use vikalpa-buddhi, rather than savikalpaka pratyakṣa, for the latter cognition. For him perception is always non-conceptual (nirvikalpaka) perception and it is of a universal, indeed of the highest universal, Being (sat). According to early Vedāntins, the real is bereft of all character since its nature is non-differentiated consciousness or Brahman. Therefore, perceptual cognition, which presents the real, must be non-conceptual or indeterminate for it is the knowledge of the existence of a thing without any qualifications or predications. Maṇḍana Miśra also denies the thesis that non-conceptual (nirvikalpaka) perception is non-verbal. This surprising claim is clearly owed to Bhartṛhari’s influence, as is evidenced by the example used by Maṇḍana Miśra in the argument. Confronted by an opponent with the claim that verbal knowledge involves duality and relation, and therefore must involve concepts, Maṇḍana Miśra replies that verbal knowledge is not necessarily relational: a baby’s non-verbal knowledge of its mother’s breast, grasps it merely as ‘this’ (of course we do not assume that the baby articulates the word ‘this’; the word, as in Bhartṛhari’s account, has a more subtle form in the baby’s mind) and, therefore, the highest knowledge of the Ultimate reality (Brahman) in which there is no duality, no relations, no concepts, may still be verbal.