A History of Sanskrit Literature c11.103

c11.103

The first part of the *Kārikā* is practically a metrical paraphrase of the *Māṇḍūkya Upanishad*. Peculiar to it is the statement that the world is not an illusion or a development in any sense, but the very nature or essence (*svabhāva*) of Brahma, just as the rays, which are all the same (*i.e.* light), are not different from the sun. The remainder of the poem is independent of the Upanishad and goes far beyond its doctrines. The second part has the special title of *Vaitathya* or the "Falseness" of the doctrine of reality. Just as a rope is in the dark mistaken for a snake, so the Ātman in the darkness of ignorance is mistaken for the world. Every attempt to imagine the Ātman under empirical forms is futile, for every one's idea of it is dependent on his experience of the world.