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HISTORY OF THE SIKHS
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APPENDIX VI
ON THE MAYA OF THE INDIANS The Maya of the Hindus may be considered under a threefold aspect, or morally, poetically, and philosophically. Morally,
it
means no more than the vanity of
Solomon
(Ecclesiastes i and ii), or the nothingness of this world; and thus Kabir likens it to delusion or evil, or to moral error in the abstract. {As. Res., xvi. 161.) The Indian reformers, indeed, made a use of Maya corresponding with the use made by the Apostle Saint John of the Logos of Plato, as Mr. Milman very judiciously observes. (Note in Gibbon, History, iii. 312.) The one adapted Maya to the Hindu notions of a sinful
world, and the other explained to Greek and Roman understandings the nature of Christ's relation to God by representing the divine intellience to be manifested in the Messiah. Poetically, Maya is used to denote a film before the eyes of gods and heroes, which limits their sight or sets bounds to their senses (Heereen, Asiatic Nations. iii. 203) and similarly Pallas dispels a mist from before the eyes of Diomed, and makes the ethereal forms of divinities apparent to a mortal. (Iliad, v.) The popular speech of all countries contains proof of the persuasion that the imperfect powers of men render them unable to appreciate the world around them. Philosophically, the Maya of the Vedant system (which corresponds to a certain extent with the Prakriti of the Sankhya school, and with the Cosmic substance of Xenophanes, or more exactly with the Play of the Infinite Being of Heraclitus) seems identical with the idealism of Berkeley. The doctrine seems also to have had the same origin as the 'Idola' system of Bacon; and thus, as an illusion or a false appearance, Maya is the opposite of Plato's 'Idea' or the True. Ordinarily, Maya is simply held to denote the apparent or sensible in opposition to the real, as when, according to the common illustration, a rope is taken for a snake, while in another point of view it is regarded as the Agent or Medium of God's manifestation in the universe, either as merely exhibiting images, or as really and actively mixed up with the production of worlds. It is curious that in England and in India the same material argument should have been used to confute Berkeley's theory of dreams -and the Brahmanical ;
,
308
^^pp
y^
APPENDIX VI
ON THE MAYA OF THE INDIANS The Maya of the Hindus may be considered under a threefold aspect, or morally, poetically, and philosophically. Morally,
it
means no more than the vanity of
Solomon
(Ecclesiastes i and ii), or the nothingness of this world; and thus Kabir likens it to delusion or evil, or to moral error in the abstract. {As. Res., xvi. 161.) The Indian reformers, indeed, made a use of Maya corresponding with the use made by the Apostle Saint John of the Logos of Plato, as Mr. Milman very judiciously observes. (Note in Gibbon, History, iii. 312.) The one adapted Maya to the Hindu notions of a sinful
world, and the other explained to Greek and Roman understandings the nature of Christ's relation to God by representing the divine intellience to be manifested in the Messiah. Poetically, Maya is used to denote a film before the eyes of gods and heroes, which limits their sight or sets bounds to their senses (Heereen, Asiatic Nations. iii. 203) and similarly Pallas dispels a mist from before the eyes of Diomed, and makes the ethereal forms of divinities apparent to a mortal. (Iliad, v.) The popular speech of all countries contains proof of the persuasion that the imperfect powers of men render them unable to appreciate the world around them. Philosophically, the Maya of the Vedant system (which corresponds to a certain extent with the Prakriti of the Sankhya school, and with the Cosmic substance of Xenophanes, or more exactly with the Play of the Infinite Being of Heraclitus) seems identical with the idealism of Berkeley. The doctrine seems also to have had the same origin as the 'Idola' system of Bacon; and thus, as an illusion or a false appearance, Maya is the opposite of Plato's 'Idea' or the True. Ordinarily, Maya is simply held to denote the apparent or sensible in opposition to the real, as when, according to the common illustration, a rope is taken for a snake, while in another point of view it is regarded as the Agent or Medium of God's manifestation in the universe, either as merely exhibiting images, or as really and actively mixed up with the production of worlds. It is curious that in England and in India the same material argument should have been used to confute Berkeley's theory of dreams -and the Brahmanical ;
,
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