Neelakantha Chaturdhara ( sa, नीलकण्ठ चतुर्धर, IAST: ''Nīlakaṇṭha Caturdhara'') (also referred as Neelakantha Chaturdhar) was a scholar who lived in

Varanasi Varanasi (; ; also Banaras or Benares (; ), and Kashi.) is a city on the Ganges river in northern India that has a central place in the traditions of pilgrimage, death, and mourning in the Hindu world. * * * * The city has a syncretic t ...

in the later half of the 17th century, famous for his commentary on the

Mahabharata The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; sa, महाभारतम्, ', ) is one of the two major Sanskrit literature, Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epics of ancient India in Hinduism, the other being the ''Ramayana, Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the s ...

.Minkowski
Nīlakaṇṭha and the Vedāntic ‘Scene’ in Banaras

Life

As with most scholars of pre-modern India, little is known of his life. He was from a

Marathi Marathi may refer to: *Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India *Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people *Palaiosouda, also known as Marathi, a small island in Greece See also * * ...

-speaking Deshastha Rigvedi Brahmin family that had been established in a town on the banks of the river

Godavari The Godavari (IAST: ''Godāvarī'' �od̪aːʋəɾiː is India's second longest river after the Ganga river and drains into the third largest basin in India, covering about 10% of India's total geographical area. Its source is in Trimbakeshwa ...

. He moved to Varanasi, where he studied "Veda and

Vedanga The Vedanga ( sa, वेदाङ्ग ', "limbs of the Veda") are six auxiliary disciplines of Hinduism that developed in ancient times and have been connected with the study of the Vedas:James Lochtefeld (2002), "Vedanga" in The Illustrated Enc ...

, Mimamsa, Srauta, Yoga, Saiva texts, Tarka, and especially Advaita Vedanta" from several teachers, before beginning his literary career.

Christopher Minkowski Christopher Zand Minkowski (; born 13 May 1953) is an American academic, who has been Boden Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Oxford since 2005. Education and early career Minkowski was educated at Gilman School before studying English ...

Nīlakaṇṭha Caturdhara's Mantrakāśīkhaṇḍa
The Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol 122, No 2 (April 2002), pp. 329–344 His teachers and mentors at Varanasi, which was then a hub of śāstric learning, included his guru referred to him as Lakṣmaṇārya, and Nārāyaṇa Tīrtha. His Vedanta writings were influenced by

Madhusūdana Sarasvatī Madhusūdana Sarasvatī (c.1540–1640) was an Indian philosopher in the Advaita Vedānta tradition and devotee of Lord Krishna. He was the disciple of Viśveśvara Sarasvatī and Mādhava Sarasvatī, and is the most celebrated name in ...

, Nṛsiṃhāśrama, and

Appayya Dīkṣita Appayya Dikshita ( IAST ', often "Dikshitar"), 1520–1593 CE, was a performer of yajñas as well as an expositor and practitioner of the Advaita Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy but with a focus on Shiva or Shiva Advaita. Life Appayy ...

. Nilakantha had also composed a commentary on the

Devi Bhagavata Purana The Devi Bhagavata Purana ( sa, देवी भागवतपुराणम्, '), also known as the Srimad Devi Bhagavatam, Srimad Bhagavatam, Bhagavata Purana or simply ''Devi Bhagavatam'', is one of the eighteen Mahapuranas of Hindui ...

Mahabharata commentary

His commentary, ''Bhāratabhāvadīpa'', is the only one that is widely used in Sanskrit studies today. His commentary was from the viewpoint of Advaita Vedānta. The first English-language translation of the Mahabharata, by the scholarly Kisari Mohan Ganguli, acknowledges the influence of Nilakantha's commentary. The

Clay Sanskrit Library The Clay Sanskrit Library is a series of books published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation. Each work features the text in its original language (transliterated Sanskrit) on the left-hand page, with its English translation on the ...

's project of translating the Mahabharata used the version known to Nilakantha rather than the

critical edition Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants, or different versions, of either manuscripts or of printed books. Such texts may range in da ...

. In the recent past, he "has been maligned without warrant" by modern scholars, but his "understandings underlie more than a little of what is in the English language renderings of the epic."James L. Fitzgerald
Bibliography
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References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Chaturdhara, Neelakantha Indian Sanskrit scholars Mahabharata Year of death unknown Year of birth unknown 17th-century Indian scholars Scholars from Varanasi

Life

Mahabharata commentary

References

Further reading

External links