Bharati — remembered as Ubhaya Bharati, “learned in both” — is one of the most striking figures in Mithila’s intellectual legend: a woman of such erudition that, when the philosopher Adi Shankara came to debate her husband Mandana Mishra, it was she who was appointed the impartial judge of the contest.
When Shankara prevailed in the argument, Bharati is said to have challenged him further on matters of worldly life that the renunciant could not answer, forcing even him to concede her learning. Whether history or parable, the story preserves Mithila’s old reputation as a land where women could stand at the very summit of philosophy.