vijñapti Indian Buddhist term meaning ‘representation’, used by some philosophers as a label for a mental event that appears, phenomenally, to have an intentional object and to represent or communicate to its possessor some information about extramental reality. The term was used mostly by Buddhists with idealist tendencies who claimed that there is nothing but representation, nothing but communicative mental events, and that a complete account of human experience can be given without postulating the existence of anything extramental. This view was not uncontroversial, and in defending it Indian Buddhists developed arguments that are in important ways analogous to those constructed by Western idealists. P.J.G.