Later, the doctrine of the Self was explicitated by seers like Yajnavalkya, who is up there with Plato as an ideas man next to whom a whole philosoph… - Yajnavalkya

Now as a man is like this or like that, according as he acts and according as he behaves, so will he be; a man of good acts will become good, a man of bad acts, bad;he becomes pure by pure deeds, bad by bad deeds;
And here they say that a person consists of desires, and as is his desire, so is his will; and as is his will, so is his deed; and whatever deed he does, that he will reap.

Similarly, among the stages of life (Ashramas) there were originally only three: as pupil devoted to knowledge, as householder and pillar of society, and as an elderly man withdrawing into the forest, literally or figuratively. The best-known example of the latter stage is when the Seer Yajnavalkya ends his married life and launches the all-important doctrine of the Self in a farewell speech to his wife Maitreyi.

From a scholarly viewpoint, though, I would observe that this disproportionate attention for the Buddha only draws attention to the equally disproportionate non-attention to other great minds in India, such as Dirghatamas, Yajñavalkya and Abhinavagupta. They are passed over in silence. What, the readers have never heard these names? Well, that is precisely what I mean. Not just this book, but most introductory works on Indian religion disregard the most important Hindu thinkers. Dirghatamas was one the earliest and greatest Vedic seers, author of many well-known sayings and similes including “the wise call the true one by many names”; Yajnavalkya was the greatest Upanishadic thinker and originator of the notion of the Self (fundamental also to Buddhism, though adversatively);