Yājñavalkya
650 BCE · Mithilā (kingdom of Videha)
legendary/proto-historical; the Bṛhadāraṇyaka layers associated with him are usually dated c. 8th–7th c. BCE, but he is a canonical frame-figure, not a documented historical person
Yājñavalkya is the towering sage of the early Upaniṣadic period, appearing chiefly in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad as a dialectician at the court of King Janaka of Videha (Mithilā). He is credited in tradition with the White Yajurveda (Śukla Yajurveda) and the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa. His teachings — the doctrine of the imperishable Self (ātman), the apophatic 'neti neti,' and his dialogues with Gārgī and his wife Maitreyī — became the bedrock on which Advaita and the other Vedāntas built. His historicity cannot be established with precision; the textual strata linked to his name are generally placed in the centuries before the Buddha (c. 8th–7th c. BCE), but he should be treated as a canonical frame-figure of the tradition.
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Mithilā (kingdom of Videha)
What they did here
Traditional birthplace of Yājñavalkya.
About Mithilā (kingdom of Videha)
Mithilā was the ancient kingdom of Videha, a region straddling the present India–Nepal border in the eastern Gangetic plain (northern Bihar and the adjoining Nepali Tarai). In the Upaniṣadic literature it is the court of King Janaka and the setting for the dialogues of the sage Yājñavalkya, a central voice of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad.
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Yājñavalkya’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Jewish world
Mesopotamian world
Works
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