A History of Sanskrit Literature c11.48

c11.48

In one of the later Upanishads, the *Çvetāçvatara* (iv. 10), the notion, so prominent in the later Vedānta system, that the material world is an illusion (*māyā*), is first met with. The world is here explained as an illusion produced by Brahma as a conjuror (*māyin*). This notion is, however, inherent even in the oldest Upanishads. It is virtually identical with the teaching of Plato that the things of experience are only the shadow of the real things, and with the teaching of Kant, that they are only phenomena of the thing in itself.