 In Buddhist philosophical thought preceding Nāgārjuna we find the distinction between primary existents (dravyasat) and secondary existents (prajñaptisat). Primary existents constitute the objective and irreducible constituents of the world out there while secondary existents depend on our conceptual and linguistic practices. Early schools of Buddhist metapysics hold that only irreducible dharmas (entities that may be conceptualized analogous to particularized properties or tropes (see Goodman 2004)) are really real whereas everything else, including shoes and ships and sealing-wax is a mere aggregate of such dharmas constructed by our conceptualizing mind. According to this theory the entire world around us would be relegated to the status of mere secondary existents, apart from the property particulars which are primary existents. In this context svabhāva is equated with primary existence and denotes a specific ontological status: to exist with svabhāva means to be part of the basic furniture of the world, independent of anything else that also happens to exist. Such objects provide the ontological rock-bottom on which the diverse world of phenomena rests. They provide the end-point of a chain of ontological dependence relations.