Māyā in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa: Human Suffering and Divine Play. By Gopal K. Gupta

Abstract

There are a number of distinct contributions within Gopal Gupta’s erudite rendering of the topic of māyā in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, a study that is accessible to general audiences and academics alike. Scholars from a broad range of Hindu traditions will find his initial literary survey of the concept of māyā to be an informative resource: The author takes us from the complex etymological debate about the term’s origin (root mā, ‘to create’) to its early use in the Ṛg Veda in relationship to mystical powers that are present both in humans and gods as a neutral power that can have either negative or positive applications (pp. 13–14). In the early Vedas, māyā is particularly associated with the means of worldly gain in the fire ritual, or is ‘generated through the performance of sacrificial ritual’ allowing practitioners to gain ‘the ability to perform mystical feats, create appearances, or change form’ (pp. 19–20), but it can also be associated with generative and creative power more broadly or anything that people ‘could not naturally account for or that defied explanation’ (pp. 15–16).