Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 443

'MAYA,'
A
OR ILLUSION
403
man, in a dream, imagined that he had been
of a certain country with great pomp and
circumstance. The next morning, on leaving his house,
he met a traveller, who gave him a detailed account of
festivities and ceremonies that had actually taken place
on the occasion of the coronation of the king of the same
country, and of which he was himself an eye-witness.
'
certain
crowned king
incidents related by the latter agreed in all particulars
with what the former had dreamed. Illusion, Maya, was
and there was no more
equally prevalent in both cases
reality in what the one man had seen than in what the
other man had dreamed. In a word, things that we take
for realities are nothing but illusions emanating from the
Deity, who is the sole Being with an actual existence.
Our senses deceive us in presenting to us objects which do
not really exist. These objects indeed are nothing but
appearances or modifications of the Deity that is to say,
there is nothing real about them.'
I do not know whether these would-be philosophers
deduce from this pernicious doctrine all the consequences
which naturally result from it, and look upon God as the
immediate author of all the evil as well as all the good
Several of them, at any
that takes place on the earth.
The Brah-
rate, are not ashamed to express this opinion.
mins with whom I have discussed the subject have candidly
confessed to me that, in their opinion, neither good nor evil
The
;
;
exists
;
power
that, in fact, all crimes, even parricide, adultery,
acts incited by the divine
or rather, that these acts are imaginative and are
and perjury, are but
fraud,
;
simply the strange result of Maya, a delusion which deceives
us and causes us to take the shadow for the reality \
The doctrine of Dwaita admits of two actual substances
God, and Matter created by God, with which He is
God, according to this doctrine, is
inseparably united.
omnipresent. He pervades all Matter and incorporates
He is present in every
Himself, so to speak, with it.
animate and inanimate thing. He does not, however,
undergo the least change or the least modification by such
—
The Abbe's opinion of the Adwaita doctrine is not supported by
modern authorities, such as Professor Beussen and Professor Max Miiller,
1
who have
written of
it
in the highest
terms of praise.
Ed.