he
maya-reflected form of Brahman as Is'vara should be regarded
as the cause of the world-appearance. The world-appearance
is an evolution or pari@nama of the maya as located in Is'vara,
whereas Is'vara (God) is the vivartta causal matter. Others
however make a distinction between maya as the cosmical factor
of illusion and avidya as the manifestation of the same entity
in the individual or jiva. They hold that though the world-appearance
may be said to be produced by the maya yet the
mind etc. associated with the individual are produced by the
avidya with the jiva or the individual as the causal matter
(_upadana_). Others hold that since it is the individual to whom
both Is'vara and the world-appearance are manifested, it is better
rather to think that these are all manifestations of the jiva in
association with his avidya or ajnana. Others however hold that
since in the world-appearance we find in one aspect pure being
and in another materiality etc., both Brahman and maya are to
be regarded as the cause, Brahman as the permanent causal
matter, upadana and maya as the entity evolving in pari@nama.
Vacaspati Mis'ra thinks that Brahman is the permanent cause of
the world-appearance through maya as associated with jiva.
Maya is thus only a sahakari or instrument as it were, by which
the one Brahman appears in the eye of the jiva as the manifold
world of appearance. Prakas'ananda holds however in his _Siddhanta
Muktavali_ that Brahman itself is pure and absolutely unaffected
even as illusory appearance, and is not even the causal
matter of the world-appearance. Everything that we see in the
phenomenal world, the whole field of world-appearance, is the
product of maya, which is both the instrumental and the upadana
(causal matter) of the world-illusion. But whatever these divergences
of view may be, it is clear that they do not in any way affect
the principal Vedanta text that the only unchangeable cause is
the Brahman, whereas all else, the effect-phenomena, have only
a temporary existence as indefinable illusion. The word maya
was used in the @Rg-Veda in the sense of supernatural power and
wonderful skill, and the idea of an inherent mystery underlying
it was gradually emphasized in the Atharva Veda, and it began
to be used in the sense of magic or illusion. In the B@rhadara@nyaka,
Pras'na, and Svetas'vatara Upani@sads the word means magic. It
is not out of place here to mention that in the older Upani@sads

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