The paper explores the relationship between language and world through the investigation of Zhuangzi's analysis of "indicators" (指) and in dialogue with two Indian frameworks: the Madhyamaka tetralemma (catuṣkoṭi) and the Jain seven-fold reasoning (saptabhaṅgī). Drawing on Kripkean semantics, the paper argues that thinkers across these traditions deploy modal arguments to grapple with the indeterminacy of language and reference.
The Zhuangzi radicalizes Gongsun Longzi's nominalism, in which indicators are ontologically distinguished from real things, and then applies the same logic against things themselves: if indicators cannot be indicated, referents are equally unstable. I argue that this indeterminacy structurally encompasses both Nāgārjuna's denialism and Malliṣeṇa's pluralism. Rather than choosing between them, the Zhuangzi holds both: a horse both is and is not a horse, and is neither a horse nor not a horse, depending on a perspective. Indeterminacy, on this reading, is not a failure of language but its feature.