The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s7.t1.20

v2.c40.s7.t1.20

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.