مايتريي

الموقف

When Yajnavalkya decides to leave home for the life of a renouncer, he offers to divide his property between his wives. Maitreyi asks whether all the wealth of the earth would make her immortal. Told that it would not, she asks instead to be taught what he knows. Yajnavalkya then teaches her that husband, wife, children or wealth are dear not for their own sake but for the sake of the Self (Atman), which must be seen, heard and understood; where everything has become one Self, there is nothing other to know. The dialogue became a model of philosophical conversation and was later read as evidence that women took part in the highest Vedic learning.

الحياة والسياق

Maitreyi is presented in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad as one of the two wives of Yajnavalkya; the text itself calls her “a discourser on Brahman”, unlike the other wife, Katyayani. The scene is told twice, in chapters two and four. Later Indian tradition honours her as a learned woman of the Vedic age. Like Gargi, she is known only from the text, and her historicity is uncertain.

الأعمال الرئيسة

• Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 2.4 and 4.5 (the dialogue with Yajnavalkya; text c. 8th–6th century BCE)