Māyā in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa

Māyā in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa: Human Suffering and Divine Play by Gopal K. Gupta offers  deep theological and hermeneutic insight into the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition. Gupta’s work on the revered Hindu text focuses on “illusion” (māyā) in the puranic tradition for half its length while going into more detail on the tradition’s view of “the human condition” (65). Gupta’s writing shines when it reveals the dramaturgical and salvific aspects of illusion as well as the nuances of the Bhāgavata’s theories on materiality in comparison to non-dualist (advaita) systems of thought, such as Śaṅkara’s Vedānta. As a term that suggests that relation (to the divine as well as to human beings) and materiality are combined, Gupta’s study hints at larger engagements that the tradition could expand upon in scholarly and critical analysis.

As befits this manuscript’s inception at Oxford University (xv), Gupta sets the tone in his introduction by introducing his lineage through Bhaktivinode Thakur, the prolific Gauḍīya polymath whose shaping of the tradition brought it to the attention of Ralph Waldo Emerson and whose lineage inspired A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, the founder of ISKCON in the 1960’s. While Gupta sets the context for the British attempt to delegitimize the practical usage of the Bhāgavata in everyday religious practice (1), I wonder if most scholars of religion would suggest it is still held in low regard today. Śaṅkara’s views on māyā do havephilosophical predominance in the textual histories of Hinduism within the academy (6). This seems a much more legitimate and fruitful point of departure. Gupta excavates the concept’s genealogy in chapter 2 from the Vedic corpus up through Saṅkara’s Śārīraka-bhāṣya before comparing it to dualist Sāṃkhya systems adapted in the Bhāgavata in chapter 3. 

While discussing the puranic text’s hermeneutic usage of māyā, Gupta reveals how it functions as a deluding principle by hiding the essential nature of the Self (ātman, puruṣa) as distinct from material reality (prakṛti). As a central principle, māyā becomes the animating force or energy (śakti) behind material reality, binding the Self into a false ego identity (ahaṃkāra) and thereby occluding its true nature. Yet māyā’s divine source paradoxically reveals himself through its power as the divine as the godhead Kṛṣṇa. Chapter 4 details this in an extended allegory of Purañjana, the embodied self. This fascinating depiction suggests that unlike the impersonal Self of non-dualist Vedānta and dualist Sāṃkhya, the Bhāgavata’s self has traits and qualities, including faculties of sensation and discernment (76).

While this embodied self becomes deluded by one of the subtlest of the material faculties, buddhi (“discernment”), and by identification with its place of residency (the city of nine gates, i.e. the body), the text employs a well-worn misogynist trope of women leading men astray from spiritual and religious knowledge. This is only somewhat tempered by the fact that the king becomes feminized due to this karmic connection and is reborn as a woman in the next life (91).

These negative portrayals of feminized traits become assets, however, in chapter 5, as Gupta turns to the role of the goddess Yogamāyā as the \ director of Kṛṣṇa’s dramatic pastimes (līlās). Here we see a suggestion again that the material reality of the self is a reflection or semblance of a divine prototype, which is most vividly empowered when engaged with the divine. As Yogamāyā, the term becomes more in line with “illusion.” As the Bhāgavata lays out, especially in its tenth chapter leading up to the rāsa-līlā dance, māyā facilitates the relationship between Kṛṣṇa and the gopīs or cowherd maidens who are the paradigmatic devotees for the Gauḍīya tradition. Māya both occludes and heightens the relationship of the devotee to the divine source (122). The underlying logic of this connection is brought out in the work of Gauḍīya theorists such as Rūpa Gosvāmin, whose work focuses on bhakti-rasa—the “savoring” or aestheticized, distilled joy of devotion as it relates to one’s relationship with the divine. Only by forging the most intense, closest relationship to Kṛṣṇa (as a friend, a child, or a lover) can one bridge the initial distance of Self from other; yet the tradition eschews a non-dualist subsumption into the divine source as One. Māyā as a goddess therefore functions by allowing these roles to be assumed by the divine actors from the Bhāgavata’s stories, thereby affording everyday devotees with models to embrace the divine source of its stories and of the material world itself.

The second half of Gupta’s manuscript deals with the aforementioned gendered dynamics inherited from previous theories. Chapter 6 discusses the role of woman (to supposedly male devotees) as both everyday sources of temptation leading them astray from Kṛṣṇa, as well as the paradigmatic devotees. Chapter 7 turns toward the problem of theodicy, tracing suffering in earlier texts as well as its purpose in the salvific plan of the Bhāgavata. Chapter 8 details the paradoxical origin and beginninglessness of bondage before Gupta glosses that it most likely means “a very long time ago” (158). Chapter 9, Gupta’s conclusion, again returns to the Bhāgavata’s status in British times (discussing in particular a famous libel suit decided by the Indian high court in 1862) as a superstitious and licentious offshoot of “true” Vedic religion at the time. Gupta’s study does less to disprove this point but does demonstrate that the Bhāgavata has an enduring and sophisticated philosophical tradition that diverges in key moments from Vedānta and Sāṃkhya (172).

For scholars of Gauḍīya and Vaiṣṇava traditions, the appendices of māyā found in the Bhāgavata are quite useful. For an interested undergraduate, Gupta’s study is a fine starting place to learn about the development of the term into a central category of theology and discursive potential in South Asian thought. It would be fruitful to see if Gupta’s textual traditions are linked to the many performing traditions of the text—as well as to dance, theater, and other styles of practice—that use māyā as a central feature tying audience to performer, inundating persons with divine potential as they embody the roles.

Jeremy Hanes is an independent scholar.

Jeremy Hanes

Date Of Review:

February 16, 2023