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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s7.t1: (a) Illusion

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s7.t1

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(a) Illusion

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In the doctrine of Yājñavalkya we have seen the tendency of the Upaniṣads to assert over again, and in still more emphatic terms, the unity of the world, which the poets of the Rigveda already foreshadowed, and to deduce from it the conclusion that the world is nothing that is real in the full sense of the word, since everything in it is not ultimately to be regarded as having a truth of its own. In what sense, then, can the empiric world be said to exist? This Yājñavalkya leaves vague, but in his exposition to Maitreyī of the doctrine that after death there is no consciousness he uses terms to which later at least great weight was attached. A duality is necessary, he argued, for one to see another, smell another, hear another, and so forth, and in death no such duality is present; the phrase,⁴ however, which he uses in this contention is ‘where there is a duality as it were (*iva*)’, and it may be deduced, not unfairly, from the addition of the qualification that he was not prepared to admit as absolutely certain the existence of the duality. Later in the Upaniṣad⁵ we have similar wording, ‘when there seems to be another’, the same particle being used. Here again we cannot simply ignore the qualification; to do so is as one-sided as to ascribe to it the value of a definite assertion of the unreality or illusory character of the universe. What we have is the germ of the illusion theory.

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⁴ ii. 4. 14.

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⁵ iv. 3. 31. Oldenberg (*Die Lehre der Upanishaden*, p. 344) unduly minimizes the essence of *iva*.

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A further passage which has been adduced in this connexion is the declaration of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad¹ regarding the modifications of the three fundamental constituents of being, fire, water, food; just as all that is made of clay, copper, or iron, is only a modification, a verbal expression (*vācārambhaṇa*), a mere name, the reality being clay, copper, or iron, so all things can be reduced to the three primary forms of reality. Further, all reality, it is clearly indicated, is reducible to reality only, all things being mere modifications, &c. In Deussen’s view² we have here the first open assertion of the unreality of the universe, a doctrine which shortly afterwards was to be realized by Parmenides in the famous declaration:

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¹ vi. 1. 3 ff.

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² *Sechzig Upanishad’s*², p. 156.

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τῷ πάντʼ ὄνομʼ ἔσται
ὅσσα βροτοὶ κατέθεντο πεποιθότες εἶναι ἀληθῆ
γίγνεσθαί τε καὶ ὄλλυσθαι,

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and later by Spinoza in his doctrine of modes of the one substance, God. The alternative view³ is to regard the whole as frankly realistic; the name is not a mere name in the sense of disguising a reality; on the contrary it serves to mark out a reality, just as the phrase *nāma-rūpa* can be used to designate a concrete individual made up of intellectual and other faculties and matter. In this case we have a doctrine frankly pantheistic, but not of illusion. The difficulty of deciding is increased by the uncertainty of the correct rendering of the text, which Deussen interprets as directly asserting that ‘change is a mere matter of words, a simple name’, treating the words *vācārambhaṇaṁ vikāro nāmadheyam* as a distinct sentence, instead—as is possible—of taking it as a predicate description, ‘a matter of words, a change, a simple name’, and it would be unwise to draw any far-reaching conclusion from the passage.

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³ S. Schayer, *Mahāyānistische Erlösungslehre*, p. 14. The sense of *vācārambhaṇa* (of dubious formation) is uncertain; cf. Oldenberg, p. 343.

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We find also in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad⁴ in a verse which occurs with slight variation in the Kaṭha,⁵ a distinct assertion that there is no diversity and that a failure to realize this fact is the source of repeated death. The Īçā emphatically demands that the universe be merged in God, and, moreover, denies becoming and passing away, thus condemning the doctrine of the reality of change; this at least is Deussen’s interpretation,⁶ though it is open to argue that the real sense is merely that the absolute stands above becoming and passing away, which it transcends. In the late Maitrāyaṇīya Upaniṣad⁷ we find the comparison of the absolute with the spark which, made to revolve, creates apparently a fiery circle, an idea which is taken up and expanded by Gauḍapāda in the Māṇḍūkya Kārikā, and which undoubtedly is consistent with the conception of the illusory nature of empirical reality. In other cases adduced by Deussen¹ there is no need to suspect any idea of the world as unreal, the frequent assertion,² that with the knowledge of the self all is known, does not exclude the reality of what is derived from the self; the reality of the absolute may be contrasted³ with empirical reality, which is styled real by man, without making the latter an illusion; when the Aitareya⁴ asserts that the universe is founded in consciousness and guided by it, it assumes its reality, not its merely apparent existence, and, if the elements of being rest on the consciousness and it on the Prāṇa,⁵ we need not suspect any lack of reality in them.

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⁴ iv. 4. 19.

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⁵ iv. 10 f.

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⁶ 1, 12–14; *Sechzig Upanishad’s*², p. 527; cf. Māṇḍūkya Kārikā, iii. 25.

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⁷ vi. 24; Kārikā, iv. 47–52.

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¹ *Phil. of Up.*, pp. 234 ff.

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² BAU. ii. 4. 5, 7–9; CU. vi. 1. 2; Muṇḍ. i. 1. 3.

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³ TU. ii. 6.

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⁴ iii. 3.

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⁵ Kauṣ. iii. 8.

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Far more importance attaches to a late Upaniṣad.⁶ The precise character of the nature of the external world is summed up finally in the doctrine of the Çvetāçvatara Upaniṣad,⁷ which sees in the world other than the absolute—which it conceives in a theistic way—an illusion, Māyā, a term thus first introduced into the philosophy of the Upaniṣads, to become, through the adoption of this theory of the universe by Gauḍapāda and Çaṅkara, the basis of the orthodox Vedānta system. It would, however, it is clear, be a mistake to regard the new term as being a mere individual innovation of the Çvetāçvatara school without previous preparation in the literary tradition. The idea of the concealment of the divine nature by illusion is seen in the Atharvaveda,⁸ where it is said that the flower of the water, who is Hiraṇyagarbha, the personal Brahman, in whom are fixed gods and men as spokes in a nave, is concealed by illusion, and the illusions of Indra in his many shapes are mentioned in the Rigveda.⁹ It may, therefore, be assumed that the term had obtained considerable favour in philosophic circles,¹⁰ before it appears in the Upaniṣad as a definite doctrine of importance. Still more important is the fact that the term was by no means ill adapted to express the nature of the relation of the empirical world to the real absolute, as it was conceived by Yājñavalkya. It is, of course, impossible to say that the actual term and its precise connotation would have approved themselves to that sage, or to those who evolved the doctrines which passed current under his name: on the other hand, the doctrine is a legitimate and natural development from the principles which he enunciated. They are clearly not to be derived in any reasonable way from a system, which was pantheistic or cosmogonic, and in which, therefore, the assumption that the world was illusory would have been ridiculous. A pantheism and still more a cosmogonism are under the danger of falling to the level of materialism, but not of evoking an illusionism.

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⁶ Oldenberg (*Die Philosophie der Upaniṣhaden*, p. 280) denies the force of this passage, but his doubt seems hypercritical.

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⁷ iv. 10.

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⁸ x. 8. 34.

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⁹ vi. 47. 18; BAU. ii. 5. 19; ÇB. xi. 1. 6. 10.

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¹⁰ *Contra*, Hopkins, JAOS. xxii. 385, 386. Cf. Speyer, *Indische Theosophie*, pp. 123.

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A very different suggestion as to the development of ideas is put forward by Schayer.¹ On this theory the Māyā doctrine comes in as the expression of a conception wholly alien to the normal Brahmanical idea of the regular working of the world, in which nature and the ritual stand in constant parallelism. The Brahman signifies the regular and orderly procedure of the universe; Māyā, on the other hand, introduces the conception of the unregulated, self-determined, intervention of a god; Indra's Māyā in the Rigveda² is the expression of his might, revealed in his great deeds. When, naturally, opposition came into being directed against the Brahmanical conception of the Übermensch whose knowledge makes him ruler of the universe, we find the idea of the necessity of divine intervention as in the Kaṭha Upaniṣad,³ and the condemnation by the Īçā⁴ of knowledge as even more unsatisfactory than ignorance, and finally in the Çvetāçvatara⁵ the natural step is taken of ascribing to god the epithet *māyāvin*. The suggestion is ingenious but unconvincing. The Çvetāçvatara certainly does not mean that god is a real creator and that matter is his real creation; the sense of delusion or illusion⁶ is paramount.

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¹ *Mahāyānistische Erlösungslehre*, pp. 22 ff.

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² x. 54. 2; vi. 47. 18. In iv. 16. 9 Schayer treats *ábrahmā* as 'dem brahman feindliche Dasyu', which is impossible.

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³ ii. 23.

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⁴ 9.

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⁵ iv. 10.

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⁶ Schayer's effort (cf. also pp. 42 f.) to establish the doctrine that Māyā is a free creation, not an illusion, is as ingenious as it is unconvincing. There is no evidence that the idea of illusion was unknown to India in connexion with a juggler's work (contrast the stories given *ibid.* pp. 53), and the synonyms of Māyā include such as Gandharvanagara. The idea of Māyā is akin to the product of the juggler in the Ratnāvalī who conjures up the appearance of a fire, into which the king rushes, whereas none exists. Cf. Asaṅga's account in the Sūtrālaṁkāra, as given by Schayer himself (ZII. ii. 103–5), which is perfectly clear as to the unreality of Māyā.

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