History of the usage of the terms --"mImAMsa", "vedAnta" and "mAyAvAda"

[N. Ganesan]

>When is the earliest use of the term mAyAvAda? Was
>zankara's philosophy known by any name which was not pre-zankaran?

I don't know the answer; But prior to zaGkara & GaudapAda,
it is unlikely that vedanta was called mAyAvAda.

F. Whaling, p. 23, zaGkara and Buddhism,
"the Advaita Vedanta set forth by Gaudapada was diffrent from the
Vedanta that had gone before, and much of that difference can
be explained by reference to his conscious or unconscious
debt to Mahayana Buddhism".

Does Ramanuja use mAyAvAda as Sankara's school?:
"zaGkara's interpretation of mAyA became a pretext for violent attacks
by many theistically-minded thinkers, including those of the Vedanta
school. For example, Ramanuja considered zaGkara's mAyA-vAda, or
the doctrine of mAyA, to be a direct compromise with the Buddhist
teaching." p. 164, N. Isayeva

"And it was in Buddhism that GauDapAda borrowed the notion of
the *illusioveness* of manifold  world activities and percetions
that are being cut short and exhausted in the moment of true
seeing. The term, used to define the falseness of any duality,
was that of the Buddhist mAyA [53]."

"[53] The word mAyA can be found in zvetAzvataropaniSad, IV.10,
where it signifies a divine creative power and is more or less
identified with prakRti, or nature, as the origin of the universe.
Indeed, it was only in Buddhist zUnyavAda that the notion of mAyA
was developed into a consistent doctrine of the illusiveness of
the phenomenal world. One sees, for example, in Nagarjuna's
Maadhyamika-kaarikaa, vii, 34, the following definition

  Just like /illusive/ mAyA, just like a dream,
     just like the city of the /heavnly musicians,/
        the Gandharvas,
  Just like a beginning is this state, it is called
     the momentary, /changing flux/.
  YathA mAyA yathA svapno gandharvanagaraM yathA/
  yathotpAdas tathA sthAna.m tathA bhaGga udIritaH//

However, Gaudapada and Sankara relate mAyA to the Vedic metaphor
of a "hidden" (gUDha) Brahman (cf., for instance, kaThopaniSad,
I.3.12)" p. 52, N. Isayeva, Shankara and Indian philosophy, 1993.





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