THE Doctrine of Maya - HolyBooks.com

""120 THE DOCTRINE OF MAYAVallabha, the founder of another Vaisnava schoolof the Vedanta, flourished in the fifteenth centuryand taught a non-ascetic view of religion, deprecating all kinds of self-mortification, which, he said,destroyed the body in which there lives a sparkof the Supreme Spirit. According to him, the highest reality was Krsna, exempt from all qualities leternal, self-sufficient, and the supreme soul of theworld. The creation of the world was by a process of evolution and involution. Krsna beingalone in the Goloka," as Wilson 2 says, and meditating on the waste of creation, gave origin to abeing of a female form endowed with the threegunas, and thence the primary agent in creation.This was Prakrti or Maya."This account of Wilsonis too scrappy and vague. As a matter of fact, thereis a very scanty literature on the teachings of Vallabha. The Sarvadarsanasamgraha has no place forit, and even Deussen, following closely the plan ofthis book, omits it altogether from his Geschichteder Philosophic. Max Muller too is quite silent onthe subject. We shall not give here any detailedaccount of Vallabha s doctrines, but we must statetheir essentials in so far as they affect the generalconception of Maya.1Hence the name of the system as Visuddhddvaita.Vallabha held that Krsna was devoid of all qualities, whileRamanuja had alleged before his times that Visnu possessedall auspicious qualities.zReligious Sects of the Hindus, vol. i., p. 123.