Maitreyī

Maitreyī appears in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad as one of the two wives of the sage Yājñavalkya. When, about to renounce the world, he offers to divide his property between his wives, Maitreyī asks whether wealth could make her immortal; told it could not, she chooses instead his teaching — prompting one of the most celebrated passages of the Upaniṣads, in which Yājñavalkya explains that all things are dear not for themselves but for the sake of the Self (ātman), which alone is to be known. She is remembered, with Gārgī, as one of the great women voices of the Upaniṣadic dialogues. Like the other figures of these texts she is a canonical frame-figure of the Upaniṣadic age, not a person with a documented biography; the relevant textual layers are placed in the centuries before the Buddha.