In Advaita Vedanta, the concepts of Avidya and Māyā are central to explaining the experience of plurality and the apparent reality of the world in contrast to the non-dual nature of Brahman. Advaita, literally meaning “non-duality,” asserts that ultimate reality is one without a second, pure consciousness, infinite and unchanging. Yet human beings experience diversity, change, limitation, and suffering. The doctrines of Avidya and Māyā serve as explanatory principles that account for this discrepancy between the absolute and empirical levels of reality. Avidya, commonly translated as ignorance, is not mere absence of knowledge but a positive beginningless misapprehension of reality. It is the root of bondage because it causes the individual self (jīva) to identify with the body, mind, and senses instead of recognizing its true identity with Brahman. This ignorance operates at the individual level and manifests as adhyāsa, or superimposition, where attributes of the non-self are falsely attributed to the Self and vice versa. For example, one mistakes the transient body as “I” and considers the Self to be limited and subject to pleasure and pain. Avidya is thus epistemic in character: it distorts cognition and produces erroneous knowledge, which in turn sustains the cycle of karma and rebirth. Advaita explains Avidya as beginningless (anādi) but not endless, because it can be removed by true knowledge (jñāna). It is neither absolutely real nor absolutely unreal; if it were