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RECENT VEDANTA LITERATURE
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like Gaudapada, has a two-valued logic and a two-valued metaphysics. What is not true is false, and what is not real is unreal. All knowledge other than that of absolute reality is error, with neither theoretical nor practical value. At best it has pragmatic value, like the knowledge of things in a dream, which has no reference to reality and no real utility. Ordinary experience is not something intermediate between truth and error, from which we rise to a higher level. It is a mixture of absolute truth and absolute error, which we purge by negating the error and preserving the truth. Truth is not something to be attained but something to be attended to. The only steps are psychological steps in this process.
A less comprehensive but more detailed study of Advaita Vedanta is found in two books by A. K. R. Chaudhuri of Calcutta. The first of these is a study of the concept of illusion (maya), the concept by which Advaitins, who deny the reality of the world, explain its appearance. The scholastic style of this book makes it unsuitable for beginners, and the frequent use of untranslated Sanskrit terms, and occasionally whole passages, offers a difficulty to non-Sanskritists. The thorough way in which the subject is developed, however, should make it of interest to students who wish to pursue this problem in detail. The doctrine of maya is analyzed, its various proofs are expounded, objections are refuted, consequences are indicated, and analogous concepts in other philosophies are compared. The doctrine presented is that of Shankara, who, it is said, "gives the most consistent account of the teachings of the upanishads" by means of his doctrine of maya, but it is restated in new words. "It is extremely difficult," Chaudhuri confesses (p. i), "to understand and interpret the subtle speculations of the master minds of India. The difficulty of interpretation greatly increases when one tries to explain them through the medium of an alien language."
The unreal cannot be perceived, and the real cannot be sublated. Objects of illusion are perceived, and so are not unreal, but are later sublated, and so are not real. The source of this illusion is ignorance. The theory of ignorance occupies the same central
10 Anil Kumar Ray Chaudhuri, The Doctrine of Maya, 2nd ed. revised and enlarged (Calcutta, 1950).
