Maitreyi
In the Upanishad she asks what use wealth is if it cannot make her immortal – and learns that the true self is what one should seek.
Placement
Called a “discourser on brahman” (brahmavadini) in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad: offered wealth by Yajnavalkya, she asks instead for what brings immortality and receives the teaching on the Self. A figure of the text whose historicity is uncertain.
Key ideas
- “What should I do with that which does not make me immortal?”
- Teaching on the Self (Atman)
- Dialogue as a form of Upanishadic teaching
Teachers: Yajnavalkya
Influence
Influenced by 1
Yajnavalkya studied with
studied with later tradition
Known only from the Upanishadic narrative: in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (2.4, 4.5) Yajnavalkya instructs his wife Maitreyi on the self before he leaves home; outside these texts nothing is known of either. Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 2.4, 4.5, tr. P. Olivelle, Upaniṣads, 1996
Evidence: AI draft
Yajnavalkya › traditionally c. 800–720 BCE
Position
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.
Life & context
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.
Main works
- Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 2.4 and 4.5 (the dialogue with Yajnavalkya; text c. 8th–6th century BCE)
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