Adi-lila, Chapter 7 95

mayaiva vaksyate devi
jagatam nasa-karanat

“The Mayavada philosophy, ” Lord Siva informed his wife Parvati, ‘‘is impious /asac-
chastra]. \t is covered Buddhism. My dear Parvati, in the form of a brahmana in
Kali-yuga | teach this imagined Mayavada philosophy. In order to cheat the atheists,
| describe the Supreme Personality of Godhead to be without form and without
qualities. Similarly, in explaining Vedanta | describe the same Mayavada philosophy
in order to mislead the entire population toward atheism by denying the personal
form of the Lord.” In the Siva Purana the Supreme Personality of Godhead told
Lord Siva:

dvaparadau yuge bhutva
kalaya manusadisu

svagamaih kalpitais tvarn ca
janan mad-vimukhan kuru

“In Kali-yuga, mislead the people in general by propounding imaginary meanings
for the Vedas to bewilder them.” These are the descriptions of the Puranas.

Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvatt Thakura comments that mukhya-vrtti (‘the direct
meaning’’) is abhidhd-vrtti, or the meaning which one can understand immediately
from the statements of dictionaries, whereas gauna-vrtti (‘the indirect meaning”) is
a meaning that one imagines without consulting the dictionary. For example, one
politician has said that Kuruksetra refers to the body, but in the dictionary there is
no such definition. Therefore this imaginary meaning is gauna-vrtti, whereas the
direct meaning found in the dictionary is mukhya-vrtti or abhidha-vrtti. This is the
distinction between the two. Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu recommends that one under-
stand the Vedic literature in terms of abhidha-vrtti, and the gauna-vrtti He rejects.
Sometimes, however, as a matter of necessity, Vedic literature is described in terms
of the /aksana-vrtti or gauna-vrtti, but one should not accept such explanations as
permanent truths.

The purpose of the discussions in the Upanisads and Vedanta-sutra is to philo-
sophically establish the personal feature of the Absolute Truth. The impersonalists,
however, in order to establish their philosophy, accept these discussions in terms of
laksana-vrtti, or indirect meanings. Thus instead of being tattva-vada, or in search of
the Absolute Truth, they become Mayavada, or illusioned by the material energy.
When Sri Visnusvami, one of the four acaryas of the Vaisnava cult, presented his
thesis on the subject matter of Suddhadvaita-vada, immediately the Mayavadis took
advantage of this philosophy and tried to establish their advaita-vada or Revaladvaita-
vada. To defeat this kevaladvaita-vada, Sri Ramanujacarya presented his philosophy °
as visistadvaita-vada, and Sri Madhvacarya presented his philosophy of tattva-vada,
both of which are stumbling blocks to the Mayavadis because they defeat their
philosophy in scrupulous detail. Students of Vedic philosophy know very well
how strongly Sri Ramanujacarya’s visistadvaita-vada and Sri Madhvacarya’s tattva-
vada contest the impersonal Mayavada philosophy. Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, how-
