Tattvasethu Glossary: Foundational Terms of Advaita Epistemology

Vasuki.G.Krishna · Tattvasethu library · 2026

These are working definitions for the essays, not creedal formulae. Technical terms here mark distinctions. They do not ask for belief. Where a later school disputes a model, the entry says so.

Adhyāsaअध्यास: Superimposition: the mutual attribution of the properties of subject and object, so that the knower is treated as if it were a known thing, and a known thing (body, mind, state) is treated as if it were the knower. In Śaṅkara’s opening analysis it is not a single false sentence but the structure of ordinary self-experience. See the Śaṅkara essay.
Ahaṃ-pratyayaअहं-प्रत्यय: The “I”-cognition: the mental event in which a person is presented as a bounded agent and enjoyer. Advaita treats this cognition as an object of awareness, not as the witness to which objects appear. Confusing ahaṃ-pratyaya with the Self is a principal form of adhyāsa. See the Hastāmalaka essay.
Anirvacanīyaअनिर्वचनीय: That which cannot be strictly classified as either real in the sense of Brahman or unreal in the sense of a mere nothing. Later Advaita uses the term for the status of ignorance and of empirical appearance: they are available to experience and to error, yet they do not survive sublation by knowledge. The word is a refusal of a forced binary, not a licence for vagueness.
Avaccheda-vādaअवच्छेदवाद: The limitation theory of the individual: consciousness is one, and the jīva is that consciousness as delimited by an adjunct (mind, body, ignorance), as space is delimited by a pot. Associated especially with the Bhāmatī orientation. The dispute with reflection-theory is a dispute about how individuality is to be modelled, not about whether Brahman is non-dual. See Bhāmatī vs Vivaraṇa.
Pramāṇaप्रमाण: A valid means of knowledge, with a defined domain: perception, inference, testimony, and the rest. Advaita’s distinctive claim is that the Upaniṣadic mahāvākya functions as a pramāṇa for the Self, not as an injunction to produce a future state. A pramāṇa removes ignorance; it does not manufacture the object it reveals. See Sureśvara and the dialectics essay.
Pratibimba-vādaप्रतिबिम्बवाद: The reflection theory of the individual: the jīva is consciousness as reflected in the mind (or in ignorance), as a face is reflected in a mirror. Associated especially with the Vivaraṇa orientation. Like avaccheda-vāda, it is an explanatory model of appearance, not a second ultimate reality beside Brahman.
Śravaṇa–Manana–Nididhyāsanaश्रवण · मनन · निदिध्यासन: The classical triad of hearing the teaching, reflecting until doubts are resolved, and sustained contemplative assimilation. The post-Śaṅkara schools agree on the triad and disagree on which moment is the immediate means of liberating knowledge. Vivaraṇa stresses śravaṇa of the mahāvākya; Bhāmatī gives particular weight to manana. Neither treats the other two as disposable. See Two Models of the Same Reality.
Upādhiउपाधि: A limiting adjunct: a condition through which one thing appears as if it were many, or as if it possessed properties that belong only to the condition. The body–mind complex is the primary upādhi in the account of the empirical individual. Removing an upādhi in knowledge does not mean destroying the empirical body; it means ending the claim that the adjunct defines the Self.
Viṣayī & Viṣayaविषयी · विषय: Knower and known; subject and object. Śaṅkara’s method begins by holding this distinction steady enough to notice that body, thought, and emotion fall on the object-side, and that treating the knower as one more object leaves the knower unexplained. The distinction is a device of inquiry, not a final metaphysics of two ultimate things.
Vivartaविवर्त: Apparent transformation: the appearance of difference without an actual conversion of the underlying reality into a second ultimate entity. The rope appearing as a snake is the teaching image, used with the caution that empirical life is not thereby declared a void. Vivarta names a relation of appearance to reality; it is not, in every passage of Śaṅkara, already the full later system of vivarta-vāda.

For the essays that put these terms to work, begin at the library.