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VEDANTA (A) ADVAITA
353 the affirmation of the shell. This is what constitutes appearance. We accordingly describe the shell as the ground of which the silver is an appearance.
It is necessary to eludicate further the idea of adhyāsa. From the fact that wherever there is adhyāsa, there is a confusion between two orders of being, we deduce that it presupposes ignorance. It is because we are oblivious of the shell that we see silver in its place. There are other causes also, such as the previous experience of silver, defective eye-sight, etc., to account for the mistake; but it will suffice for our purpose to confine our attention to the most important of them, viz, ignorance or avidyā. Now avidyā, which is only another word for ajñāna, implies, like jñāna, some person to whom it belongs (āśraya) and some object to which it refers (visaya). The notion of knowledge' is not complete until we mention the subject that knows and the object that is known. Similarly, in the case of avidyā, there must be someone whom it characterizes and an object which is misapprehended in it. In the present case, the person that mistakes the shell for silver is its āśraya, and the shell is its vişaya. It is avidyā 3 thus determined that is described as the cause of silver4; and it operates in a double manner. It conceals the fact of shell and shows up silver in its place. To see silver where there is only shell, a necessary condition is the concealment of the shell. Suppression precedes substitution. These two aspects of it are respectively termed āvaraņa or 'veiling' and vikṣepa or 'revealing.' As the avidyā does not put the shell entirely
For this reason the silver is described as ananya with reference to the shell which Sarkara explains as 'not existing apart from.' Ananyatvam vyatirekeņa abhāvah. See com. on Vs. II. i. 14. · That is, the proximate ground. The ultimate ground is always spirit or caitanya. 3 This avidyā should not be confounded with the one described above as the radical adjunct of the jiva. That is constitutive of the jiva; this is only a passing characteristic of it. The one continues till mokşa is attained; the other disappears with the error it has occasioned. 4 Avidya is directly the cause of the illusion, but all knowledge has by hypothesis an object and that object, viz. silver,' here is ascribed to the same avidyā, not being traceable to any other source. See VP. p. 137.
