Uddālaka Āruṇi
550 BCE · Pañcāla / Kuru-Pañcāla region
legendary/proto-historical; Chāndogya layers c. 8th–6th c. BCE
Uddālaka Āruṇi appears in both the Chāndogya and Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣads as a leading sage of the early Vedānta. His instruction of his son Śvetaketu in Chāndogya 6, culminating in the repeated mahāvākya 'tat tvam asi' ('that thou art'), is among the most cited passages in all of Indian philosophy and a cornerstone of Advaita. As with Yājñavalkya, he is a canonical figure of the Upaniṣadic age rather than a documented historical individual; the associated textual layers are conventionally dated to the centuries before the Buddha.
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Pañcāla / Kuru-Pañcāla region
What they did here
Traditional birthplace of Uddālaka Āruṇi.
About Pañcāla / Kuru-Pañcāla region
The Kuru–Pañcāla region was a heartland of late-Vedic culture in the western Gangetic plain (parts of present-day Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh). It is the milieu of much of the Brāhmaṇa and early Upaniṣadic literature, associated with the sage Uddālaka Āruṇi.
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Uddālaka Āruṇi’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Egyptian world
Jewish world
Buddhist world
Works
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