Concept
Yajnavalkya
Overview
Yajnavalkya or Yagyavalkya (Sanskrit: याज्ञवल्क्य, IAST: Yājñavalkya) is a Hindu Vedic sage prominently mentioned in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (c. 700 BCE) and Tattiriya Upanishad. Yajnavalkya proposes and debates metaphysical questions about the nature of existence, consciousness and impermanence, and expounds the epistemic doctrine of neti neti ("not this, not this") to discover the universal Self and Ātman. Texts attributed to him include the Yajnavalkya Smriti, Yoga Yajnavalkya and some texts of the Vedanta school. He is also mentioned in the Mahabharata as well as various Puranas, Brahmanas and Aranyakas.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
It is quite recently that we first obtained a definite knowledge of Indian Philosophy; in the main we understand by it religious ideas, but in modern times men have learned to recognize real philosophic writings. Colebrooke,[17] in particular, communicated abstracts to us from two Indian philosophic works, and this forms the first contribution we have had in reference to Indian Philosophy. What Frederick von…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy
States what Yajnavalkya is.
Thus was admitted, between the Supreme Being and man, an incalculable chain of intermediary beings whose perfections decreased proportionably with their alienation from the Creative Principle. All the philosophers and all the sectarians who admired this spiritual hierarchy considered, under the relations peculiar to them, the different beings of which it was composed. The Persian magians who saw there genii, more or…
Antoine Fabre d'Olivet, The golden verses of Pythagoras
Close in meaning to Yajnavalkya; the term itself is not named.
It is the alpha and omega of the oldest book in the world, the sacred *Vedas, whose dogmatic part, or rather esoteric teaching, is found in the *Upanishads.[2] There, in almost every page this profound doctrine lies enshrined; with tireless repetition, in countless adaptations, by many varied parables and similes it is expounded and inculcated. That such was, moreover, the fount whence Pythagoras drew his wisdom…
Arthur Schopenhauer, The Basis of Morality
Close in meaning to Yajnavalkya; the term itself is not named.
Philosophers who discussed Yajnavalkya
Related ideas
- Ātman (Hinduism)
- Paul Deussen
- Hinduism
- Hindus
- Jainism
- Karma
- Moksha
- Metaphysics
- Monism
- Mahabharata
- Brahman
- Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
- Vedanta
- Advaita Vedanta
- Brahmana
- Puranas
- Max Müller
- Taittiriya Upanishad
- Oxford University Press
- International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration
- History of philosophy
- Upanishads
- Epistemology
- Uddālaka Āruṇi
Place in the tradition
Part of Ajñana.