Hinduism / by Monier Williams.

  • Monier Monier-Williams
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hinduism / by Monier Williams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    213/254 page 205
    If this be true, then pure Being must be almost identical with pure Nothing, so that the two extremes of Buddhistic Nihilism and Vedantic Pantheism, far as they profess to be apart, appear in the end to meet. The creed of the Vedantist does not necessarily imply that the world is all Maya, ‘mere illusion.’ A true Vedantist, though he affirms that Brahma alone is real, allows a practical (vydvalidrika) exist- ence to souls, the world, and Isvara, as distinguished from real (pdramdrthika) and from illusory existence (prdtibhdsika). How, indeed, can it be denied that external things exist when we see them and feel them at every instant ? But how, on the other hand, can it be maintained that an impure world is evolved from a pure spiritual essence ? To avoid this diffi- culty, the Supreme Spirit is represented as ignoring himself by a sort of self-imposed ignorance, in order to draw out from himself, for his own amusement, the separate individuated souls and various appear- ances, which, although really parts of his own essence, constitute the apparent phenomena of the universe. Hence the external world, individual souls, and even Isvara, the personal God, are all described as created by a power which the Vedantist is obliged, for want of a better solution of his difficulty, to call A-vidya, generally translated ‘ Ignorance,’ but perhaps better rendered by ‘ False Knowledge,’ or ‘ False Notion.’ Of this power there are two distinct forms of operation, that of envelopment (dvarana), and that of projection (vikshepa); which last projects on the soul the appearance of a world, producing first the five subtle elements, and drawing out from them seventeen subtle bodies (comprising the five organs of sense, the five organs of action, the five vital airs, with bnddhi and manas), and the five gross elements, as in the Sankhya. p 2
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