The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s7.t1.26

v2.c40.s7.t1.26

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.