Within the Brahma Sūtras, the notion later called Māyā is present more as an underlying structure than as a fully articulated doctrine. The text consistently affirms Brahman as the sole ultimate reality—unchanging, self-sufficient, and the cause upon which the entire universe depends. The world is treated as an effect that has no independent existence apart from Brahman, which allows later Advaita thinkers to speak of different levels of reality: an empirical order in which the world is valid, and an absolute order in which only Brahman truly is. This framework of dependence and graded reality becomes the scriptural soil from which the classical teaching on Māyā grows.

At the same time, the Sūtras are deeply concerned with the tension between apparent multiplicity and ultimate non-duality. They uphold the non-dual nature of Brahman, yet acknowledge scriptural and experiential data that speak of difference—between jīva and Īśvara, between world and Brahman. These differences are treated as provisional, intelligible from an empirical standpoint but not final from the highest standpoint. In this way, the text provides a basis for understanding the universe as a manifold appearance of the one Brahman, without implying any real change in Brahman itself.

The Sūtras also connect bondage with ignorance of Brahman and liberation with knowledge of Brahman. Although the term Māyā is not systematized there as a technical category, this emphasis on ignorance (avidyā) as the root of mistaken experience is crucial. Later Advaita interprets this as ignorance or Māyā making the non-dual Brahman seem to be divided into many individual selves and a separate world, much like classic examples of misperception found in the wider Vedāntic tradition. Thus, the text points toward a vision in which the sense of separation is not ultimately real but arises from not knowing Brahman as one’s own essence.

Other Vedānta traditions, drawing on the same Sūtras, decline to treat the world as illusory in the strong sense. For them, the world is genuinely real though entirely dependent on Brahman, and when they speak of Māyā at all, it is as a creative power rather than as ontological illusion. This diversity of interpretation shows that the Brahma Sūtras themselves do not fully codify a single doctrine of Māyā, but instead offer a subtle account of Brahman’s sole ultimacy, the world’s derivative status, and ignorance as the source of bondage. From that subtle account, different schools articulate distinct metaphysical visions while standing on the same textual ground.