[Advaita-l] Ontological status of avidyA

[Venkatraghavan S]

Namaste Praveenji,

>
> अविद्यालक्षणा is a little different from अविद्याकृत because the former
equates the nature of Maya as avidyA, as seen in introduction to Gita 9.8
also, where Bhashyakara equates both by saying-- एवम् अविद्यालक्षणाम् to
qualify प्रकृतिम् (=मायाम्) in the verse.

I agree with you, I was myself debating whether I should add avidyAkrita to
the list, as typically Shankara uses it as an adjective for mAya's products
such as nAmarUpa etc, and not for mAya itself . The reason I reluctantly
decided to include it in the end is there appeared to be one instance (that
I could find on advaita sharada when I looked then) where he seemed to use
it different to his normal usage. It occurs in kArika bhAshya 1.6. दृष्टं च
रज्जुसर्पादीनामविद्याकृतमायाबीजोत्पन्नानां रज्ज्वाद्यात्मना सत्त्वम्.

Having reread the sentence this morning, the usage is
अविद्याकृतमायाबीजोत्पन्नं and not अविद्याकृतमायाबीजं, as I had previously
thought. So the description is of रज्जुसर्पं, not मायाबीजं.

My error, thanks for pointing out. I hadn't read the sentence properly.

Regards,
Venkatraghavan