[Sidenote:  Maya is implied in Pantheism.]

[Sidenote:  The outcome of Maya.]

The doctrine of Maya is, of course, a postulate, a necessity of Pantheism.  Brahma is the name of the impersonal pantheistic deity.  First among the unrealities, the outcome of Maya or Illusion or Ignorance, is the idea of a supreme personal God, Parameswar, from whom, or in whom, next come the three great personal deities, namely, the Hindu Triad, Brahm[=a] (not Brahma), Vishnu, and Siva,—­Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer respectively.  These and all the other deities are the product of Maya, and thus belong to the realm of unreality along with Parameswar.[80] Popular theology, on the other hand, begins with the three great personal deities.

[Sidenote:  The Hindu Text-book transforms Pantheism into Monotheism.]

Now come we again to the Text-book.  Rightly, as scholars would agree, it describes the predominant philosophy of Hinduism as pantheistic.  The Text-book, however, goes farther, and declares all the six systems of Hindu philosophy to be parts of one pantheistic system.[81] The word pantheism, I ought to say, does not occur in the Text-book.  But here is its teaching.  “All six systems,” we are told, “are designed to lead man to the One Science, the One Wisdom which saw One Self Real and all else as Unreal.”  And again, “Man learns to climb from the idea of himself as separate from Brahma to the thought that he is a part of Brahma that can unite with Him, and finally [to the thought] that he is and ever has been Brahma, veiled from himself by Avidy[=a]” (that is, Ignorance or Maya).  Our point is that the Text-book of Hindu Religion is professedly pantheistic, and the above is clearly pantheism and its postulate Maya.  But in the final exposition of this pantheism, what do we find?  To meet the modern thought of educated India, the pantheism is virtually given up.[82] Brahma, the One and the All, becomes simply the Deity Unmanifested; who shone forth to men as the Deity Manifested, Parameswar; of whom the Hindu Triad, Brahm[=a] and Vishnu and Siva, are only three names.  Maya or Delusion, the foundation postulate of pantheism, by which things seem to be,—­by which the One seems to be many,—­is identified with the creative will of Parameswar.  In fact, Pantheism has been virtually transformed into Theism, Brahma into a Creator, and Maya into his creative and sustaining fiat.  The Text-book of the Hindu Religion is finally monotheistic, as the times will have it.

[Sidenote:  A Parsee claiming to be a monotheist.]

As further confirmation of the change in the Indian mind, we may cite the paper read at the Congress on the History of Religions, Basel, 1904, by the Deputy High-priest of the Parsees, Bombay.  The dualism of the Zoroastrian theology has hitherto been regarded as its distinctive feature, but the paper sought to show “that the religion of the Parsees was largely monotheistic, not dualistic.”