________________
314 Controversy between Dualists and Monists [ch. prakrti is eightfold, inasmuch as it has five modifications as the five elements, and three as manas, buddhi and ahamkāra. The māyā, by the help of which God creates the world, is like the mother of the world and is called, in the theological terminology of the Madhva school, Laksmi. The creative māyā, or the will of God, is also called the svarūpa-māyā, because she always abides with the Lord. The māyā as praksti, or as her guiding power (mayāšrayin), is outside of God, but completely under His control?
God is referred to in the Gītā and other sacred texts as possessing a universal all-pervading body, but this body is, as we have already said, a spiritual body, a body of consciousness and bliss (jñānānandātmako hy asau). This His universal body transcends the bounds of all the gunas, the māyā and their effects. All throughout this universal all-transcending spiritual body of the Lord is full of bliss, consciousness and playful activity. There is no room for pantheism in true philosophy, and therefore Vedic passages which seem to imply the identity of the world and God are to be explained as attributing to God the absolute controlling power3. Again, when it is said that the individual souls are parts of God, it does not mean that they are parts in any spatial sense, or in the sense of any actual division such as may be made of material objects. It simply means that the individual souls are similar to God in certain respects and are at the same time much inferior to Him. and his followers to be authoritative, speaks of the four wives of Vasudeva, Sankarşaņa, Pradyumna and Aniruddha, as Māyā, Jaya, Krti and Santi, which are but the four forms of the goddess Sri, corresponding to the four forms of Hari as Vamadeva, Sankarşaņa, Pradyumna and Aniruddha. Yukti-mallikā, p. 191.
1 It is curious to note that the māyā which produces illusion and which affects only the individual souls, counted in one place referred to above as the third māyā, is counted again as the fourth māyā, and prakrti (or jada-māyā and māyāśrt) as the second and the third māyās. Yukti-mallikā, p. 192 a, b.
2 The Bhāva-vilāsint (p. 198), giving the meaning of the word sarira (which ordinarily means "body," from a root which means "to decay") with reference to God, assigns a fanciful etymological meaning; it says that the first syllable sa means bliss, ra means "play," and ira means "consciousness." In another place Varadaraja speaks of the Lord as being of the nature of the pure bliss of realization and the superintendent of all intelligence: vidito'si bhavān sākşāt puruşah prakrteh parah kevalānubhavānandasvarūpas sarva-buddhi-drk. Yukti-mallika, p. 201.
atah purusa eveti prathamā pañcami yadā sadā sarva-nimittatva-mahimă pumsi varnyate. yadā tu saptami sarvadhāratvam varnayet tada
sūktasyaikārthatā caivam satyeva syān na cāryathā. Ibid. p. 211. • tat-sadyśatve sati tato nyunatvam jivasya amsatvam na tu ekadeśatvam. Nyāyāmpta, p. 606.
