dravyasat (Sanskrit, ‘existence as a thing’ or, more loosely, ‘primary existence’), a category used by Indian Buddhist scholars to label the most basic kind of existence that entities can have. It was usually opposed to prajñaptisat, ‘existence as a designation’ or ‘secondary existence’. According to most varieties of Buddhist metaphysics, anything that can be an object of thought or designation must exist in some sense; but some things exist primarily, really, in their own right (dravya-sat), while others exist only as objects of linguistic reference (prajñapti-sat). An example of the first kind would be a moment of physical form; an example of the second kind would be an ordinary object such as a pot, since this is composed of a series of existents of the first kind. P.J.G.