Avidyā – Its Āśraya and Viṣaya

Sankarācārya's main thesis was that Brahman alone is the Ultimate Reality, everything else being unreal. But how did the world-appearance become manifest and out of what ? Sankara does not seem to have thought it worthwhile to answer such questions at length. For him Avidya is a good postulate which answers all such questions satisfactorily.

Transcribed from the prepared edition. This is the beginning of the article, not a summary — open the PDF to read it in full.

सोलोमन उस प्रश्न को उठाती हैं जिसे शंकर ने अनिर्णीत छोड़ा था — अविद्या का आश्रय क्या है और विषय क्या। अप्पय्य दीक्षित के सिद्धान्तलेशसंग्रह से वे परवर्ती अद्वैतियों के परस्पर-विरोधी उत्तर रखती हैं, ब्रह्म अथवा जीव, और दिखाती हैं कि हर उत्तर जगन्मिथ्यात्व को बदल देता है। Solomon pursues the question Śaṅkara declined to settle: what avidyā rests on and what it conceals. Working from Appayya Dīkṣita's Siddhāntaleśasaṅgraha, she sets out the later Advaitins' competing answers, Brahman or the jīva as its locus, and shows how each reshapes the doctrine of the world's unreality.

Written by the archive’s cataloguers, not by the author.