Words Maya and nirguNa

Vidyasankar vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM
Mon Jul 23 13:41:53 CDT 2001


>Yesteday Shreeman S.M.S. Chari mentioned in his lectures that the
>word Maya and nirguNa each one occurs only ones in the upanishat -
>

If we are to look at only the 12 major texts (aitareya, ISa, kaTha,
taittirIya, bRhadAraNyaka, chAndogya, kena, praSna, muNDaka, mANDUkya,
kaushItakI and SvetASvatara) -

nirguNa occurs in the last text, in sAkshI cetA kevalo nirguNaSca,
and mAyA in mAyAM tu prakRtim vidyAt .

If I remember right, praSna should also have the word mAyA somewhere.
Have to check on it. And bRhadAraNyaka has indro mAyAbhiH puruRupa
Iyate - mAyA is here, in the instrumental case.

Elsewhere in the body of the AraNyaka texts, not to mention the other
upanishads, the occurrences are more numerous. However, I fail to see
why this should be a numbers game here. The sense of nirguNa is there
in many other terms, such as nirindriya, acintya, avyapadeSya etc.

Vidyasankar



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