The System of the Vedanta according to Badarayana's Brahma-Sutras and Cankara's Commentary c8.s3.t4.2

c8.s3.t4.2

Since *Avidyâ* is, as we saw above (p. 55) innate, and our birth depends on the works of a previous existence, one might imagine the innate obscuration of our knowledge was a result of previous offences reaching back *ad infinitum*. But the system gives no real ground for this assumption. Avidyâ cannot properly be a result of Samsâra, for on the contrary the reverse is the case and the whole of Samsâra depends on Avidyâ. Under these circumstances nothing remains but to recall the negative character of the idea of Avidyâ. It needs no explanation so far as it is not a positive defect, but only Ignorance, the absence of knowledge. It is true something very positive depends on Avidyâ; viz. the whole existence of the world and of the individual soul. It is however just the meaning of this reference of all empirical existence to Ignorance, that this whole world, the whole beginningless and endless Samsâra, is only for us something positive and real, but is in actuality non-Brahman and (as Brahman alone is the Existent) non-Existent, a mere mirage (mâyâ, mṛigatṛishṇikâ), a product of Ignorance.