Sāyaṇa (Sāyaṇācārya)
A figure from the books
#Sayana
Sāyaṇa (Sāyaṇācārya) · d. 1387
In the books · 1 chapter
Who this is
Vedic scholarship and statecraft — minister of the Vijayanagara empire under Bukka I and Harihara II, and the name over the Vedārthaprakāśa, the great commentary on very nearly the whole Veda.
“Every modern translation of the Ṛgveda still argues with a fourteenth-century prime minister — corrects him on one page, leans on him on the next — because without the commentary that carries his name, nobody today could read the Veda at all.”
The big idea, in the book's words:
“India's reciters had preserved the sound of the Vedas perfectly for over two thousand years while the meaning of their archaic language slowly slipped away — so Sāyaṇa organized a state-funded workshop of scholars that glossed the Veda word by word, line by line, and made the oldest texts in continuous religious use on earth readable again.”
From the book
Read the chapter
I haven't posted on #Sayana yet, outside the book.
Ask me about #Sayana
Send me a question. It stays private. I answer the best ones publicly, as “You asked”.
Send me a question