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Avidya in Veddnta
akşara us a causal potency. Thus avidyā becomes a material causal poteccy the stuff out of which the world-phenomena emerge. It is almost an equi. valent of the Sāṁkhya Praksti with this difference that it is not regarded as totally different and independent of the Lord. Avidya is an unintelligible and indefinable principle. Even avidya is unreal from the ultimate point of view as it cannot form a part of the nature of kūtastha Brahman. It seems that avidya was hypostatised to explain away intelligibly the world-phenomena as unreal and non-existent from the ultima:e point of view, wherein avidyā, its explanation, also ceases to have any reality.
Max Müller defends Sankara, "It has ofien been said that it is unsatisfactory for a philosopher if he has no more to say than that it is so, without being able to say why it is so. But there is a point in every system of philosophy where a confession of ignorance is inevitable aed all the greatest philosophers have had to confess that there are limits to our understanding the world; nay, this knowledge of the limits of our under. standing has, since Kant's Criticism of Pure Reason, become the very foundation of all critical philosophy."1
1. The Vedānta Philosophy, -Max Muller-p. 57 (Susil Gupta India,
Ltd., Calcutta).
Sambodhi XI-!1
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