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The Views Regarding God and the Doctrine of Brahman
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ought to become an object of experience, Ceriainly, Brahman as thus conceived in the form of something eternal-undergoing-no-change cannot it. self undergo a transformation. Besides, there was to be accounted for bondage-cum-emancipation on the one hand and the difference obtaining between one soul and another on the other, All such difficulties Sankara sought to obviate by adopting the doctrine of māyā(=illusion), However, if māyā be conceived as an independent element then too absolute nondualism does not remain in tact. Hence describing it as 'not-describableeither-as-something-real-or-as-something -unreal' and the like he treats it as neither something different from the element Brahman nor as something absolutely identical with it, and yet by positing the existence of māyā he justified the doctrine of absolute non-dualism and demonstrated that the visible multiplicity of practical life is something māyā-burn. Really, the same difficulty about deriving a multiplicity out of one single element which was faced by the Sankhya who advocated the doctrine of an inde. pendent prakrti was faced by Sankara as well. However, the way out of the difficulty was easy for the Sankhya on account of his positing some. thing eternal-undergoing-change but not so easy for Sankara. Yet the latter facilitated his path with great skill. With the help of the concept of māyā Sankara established both the position that the element Brahman is something eternal-undergoing-no-change as also his doctrine of obsolute non-dualism, but he came out with no all-round elucidation of the problems that were present before him and were to present themselves in later times. Such an elucidation was offered by his highly learned disciples who were either his contemporaries or who came after him. Hence it is that this elucidation is met with in so many varieties. Thus Sarvajñātma. muni offers one variety of elucidation, Vācaspatimišra another variety, a third master a third variety. But in all these elucidations the tenet favou. red by Sankara has been preserved in its entirety. And this tenet is the doctrine of absolute non-dualis in 14
If Brahınan itself is to be called God then it too will have to be elucidated as to how it is possible for the same Brahman to act as God on the one hand and as a soul on the other. Hence it is that with a view to answering this very question that the scholars have posited a duality of māyā(= illusion) and avidyā(=ignorance). Thus Brahman having māyā for its adjunct is God, the same having avidyā for its adjunct is a soul. Māyā is but avidya pertaining to the totality of souls while an individual avidya is the adjunct of a particular soul. Thus even after describing and esta. blishing Brahman in the form of God so many questions do arise. Of
14 See Dasagupta's History of Indian Philosophy' Vol. III, pp. 197-8, footnote num
ber two.
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