itself on the basis of the Upanishads, is a circumstance which we
clearly must not lose sight of, when attempting to determine what the
Upanishads themselves are teaching concerning the character of the
world.

In enquiring whether the Upanishads maintain the Mâyâ doctrine or not,
we must proceed with the same caution as regards other parts of the
system, i.e. we must refrain from using unhesitatingly, and without
careful consideration of the merits of each individual case, the
teaching--direct or inferred--of any one passage to the end of
determining the drift of the teaching of other passages. We may admit
that some passages, notably of the B/ri/hadâra/n/yaka, contain at any
rate the germ of the later developed Mâyâ doctrine[25], and thus render
it quite intelligible that a system like /S/a@nkara's should evolve
itself, among others, out of the Upanishads; but that affords no valid
reason for interpreting Mâyâ into other texts which give a very
satisfactory sense without that doctrine, or are even clearly repugnant
to it. This remark applies in the very first place to all the accounts
of the creation of the physical universe. There, if anywhere, the
illusional character of the world should have been hinted at, at least,
had that theory been held by the authors of those accounts; but not a
word to that effect is met with anywhere. The most important of those
accounts--the one given in the sixth chapter of the Chândogya
Upanishad--forms no exception. There is absolutely no reason to assume
that the 'sending forth' of the elements from the primitive Sat, which
is there described at length, was by the writer of that passage meant to
represent a vivarta rather than a pari/n/âma that the process of the
origination of the physical universe has to be conceived as anything
else but a real manifestation of real powers hidden in the primeval
Self. The introductory words, addressed to /S/vetaketu by Uddâlaka,