THE Doctrine of Maya - HolyBooks.com

CHAPTER IIDEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPTION OF MAYA.AFTER a brief philological survey of the word maya,we now turn to the idea itself. The word and theidea are not to be confused ;issince such a confusionproductive of various false assumptions as to thein relation to its place in Indiandoctrine of mayathought. There are not a few who boldly allegethat the doctrine is distinctively of a late origin andgrowth, an after-thought or a subsequent suggestion of some of the later Vedantins of the purelyIdealistic temperament. The idea of Maya, theypretend, is wholly wanting in the earlier philosophical treatises of the Hindus, viz., the Upanisads,etc. Without anticipating any discussion on thispoint, we may only state that such thinkers seem tous to be entirely mistaken. Hence our main thesisin this chapter will be to show, with the aid of suitable authoritative quotations from our philosophicliterature, that the idea of Maya is very oldcertainly older than the word maya. The word inits usual sense, of course, occurs for the first time in35