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الموقف

Gargi questions Yajnavalkya twice. First she asks on what the world is woven, “warp and weft”, and pursues the answer until Yajnavalkya warns her not to ask too far, lest her head fall off. She returns with two questions, “like two arrows”: what pervades past, present and future, above and below the heavens? The answer is the imperishable (akshara), which neither sees nor hears but is the unseen seer, the unheard hearer. The passage shows a woman as a respected participant in the earliest Indian philosophical debates, and it states a central Upanishadic idea: the ground of all things cannot itself be an object.

الحياة والسياق

Gargi Vachaknavi appears in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, one of the oldest Upanishads, composed in northern India around the 8th to 6th century BCE. She is named among the Brahmins who question the sage Yajnavalkya at a debate held by King Janaka of Videha. Nothing is known of her outside this text, and whether she was a historical person or a literary figure cannot be decided.

الأعمال الرئيسة

• Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 3.6 and 3.8 (her questions to Yajnavalkya; text c. 8th–6th century BCE)

يرد في

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