so the Madhyamika Sutra
can declare that the Buddha does not really exist. The Mahayanist
philosophers do not use the word Maya but they state the same theory
in a more subjective form by ascribing the appearance of the
phenomenal world to ignorance, a nomenclature which is derived from
the Buddha's phrase, "From ignorance come the Sankharas."

Here, as elsewhere, Buddhist and Brahmanic ideas acted and reacted in
such complex interrelations that it is hard to say which has borrowed
from the other. As to dates, the older Upanishads which contain the
foundations but not the complete edifice of Vedantism, seem a little
earlier than the Buddha. Now we know that within the Vedantist school
there were divergences of opinion which later received classic
expression in the hands of Sankara and Ramanuja. The latter rejected
the doctrines of Maya and of the difference between relative and
absolute truth. The germs of both schools are to be found in the
Upanishads but it seems probable that the ideas of Sankara were
originally worked out among Buddhists rather than among Brahmans and
were rightly described by their opponents as disguised Buddhism. As
early as 520 A.D. Bodhidharma preached in China a doctrine which is
practically the same as the Advaita.

The earliest known work in which the theory of Maya and the Advaita
philosophy are clearly formulated is the metrical treatise known as
the Karika of Gaudapada. This name was borne by the teacher of
Sankara's teacher, who must have lived about 700 A.D., but the high
position accorded to the work, which is usually printed with the
Mandukya Upanishad and is practically regarded as[185] a part of it,
make an earlier date probable. Both in language and thought it bears a
striking resemblance to Buddhist writings of the Madhyamika school and
also contains many ideas and similes which reappear in the works of
Sankara.[186] On the other hand the Lankavatara Sutra which was
translated into Chinese in 513 and therefore can hardly have been
composed later than 450, is conscious that its doctrines resemble
Brahmanic philosophy, for an interlocutor objects that the language
used in it by the Buddha about the Tathagatagarbha is very like the
Brahmanic doctrine of the Atman. To which the Buddha replies that his
language is a concession to those who cannot stomach the doctrine of
the negation of reality in all its austerity. Some of the best known
verses of Gaudapada compare the world of appea