“As a rope is mistaken for a snake in the dark, so the Self is mistaken for the body and the senses.”
— Adi ShankaraAnalogy of rope and snake from Shankara's Brahma Sutra commentary and Upadesasahasri; standard illustration
Commentary
This analogy, one of the best known in Advaita Vedanta, explains how a real object can be misperceived as something it is not, and it illustrates the error of identifying the Self with the body and senses. The rope and snake example allows Shankara to show that the mistaken perception is not a vacuous illusion but a superimposition upon a real substrate, which is the rope in this case and the Self in the other. Eliot Deutsch discusses the analogy as a clear example of Advaita's theory of error, in which the substratum remains unaltered by the misperception. Sengaku Mayeda's study of the Upadesasahasri shows that such illustrations were used for pedagogical purposes, to make abstract doctrines accessible to students. Richard King notes that analogies of this kind were common in Indian philosophical debate, and that Shankara used them to distinguish his position from Buddhist and Samkhya views. Paul Hacker's study cautions that the analogy must be read within the framework of superimposition rather than as an isolated image. The illustration is widely used in the school's instruction and is securely associated with Shankara's method.
Commentary
This analogy, one of the best known in Advaita Vedanta, explains how a real object can be misperceived as something it is not, and it illustrates the error of identifying the Self with the body and senses. The rope and snake example allows Shankara to show that the mistaken perception is not a vacuous illusion but a superimposition upon a real substrate, which is the rope in this case and the Self in the other. Eliot Deutsch discusses the analogy as a clear example of Advaita's theory of error, in which the substratum remains unaltered by the misperception. Sengaku Mayeda's study of the Upadesasahasri shows that such illustrations were used for pedagogical purposes, to make abstract doctrines accessible to students. Richard King notes that analogies of this kind were common in Indian philosophical debate, and that Shankara used them to distinguish his position from Buddhist and Samkhya views. Paul Hacker's study cautions that the analogy must be read within the framework of superimposition rather than as an isolated image. The illustration is widely used in the school's instruction and is securely associated with Shankara's method.