Alaṅkāra-sudhānidhi – Sāyaṇācārya, the Author

2. The Author

2.1. Lineage, Teachers

Sāyaṇācārya was the second son of a pious brāhmaṇa couple, Śrīmatī and Māyaṇa. He belonged to the Bhāradvāja-gotra, Bodhāyana-sūtra and Yajuśśākhā. Traditional belief holds that Sāyaṇācārya’s family hailed from the Hoysaḻa-karṇāṭaka sect of brāhmaṇas. People of this denomination were largely concentrated in South-western Karnataka, in districts such as Hassan, Shimoga and Chikmagalur in the Malnad region.^[1] These places are situated close to Sringeri, where Sāyaṇācārya went on to study. His elder brother was the illustrious Mādhavācārya, who later became an ascetic and assumed the name Vidyāraṇya. His younger siblings were Siṅgalè and Bhoganātha.^[2] Commenting on the age-difference among Māyaṇa’s children, scholars opine that Sāyaṇācārya was only a couple of years younger than Mādhavācārya, while Siṅgalè was younger than them both. Bhoganātha was born much later and was the youngest of the children.^[3]

Some verses in the present treatise provide an insight into Sāyaṇācārya’s family life. We learn that he had three sons: Kampaṇa, Māyaṇa and Śiṅgaṇa.^[4] Kampaṇa was perhaps named after Sāyaṇācārya’s patron-king. Māyaṇa is a corrupt form of Mādhava, which was the name of Sāyaṇācārya’s father and elder brother. According to R Narasimhachar the name of Sāyaṇācārya’s wife was Himavatī,^[5] but the text in its present form does not mention this anywhere. We surmise that some among the illustrative verses should have stated this detail, and the palm leaves containing these have been damaged over the years. This is why we do not find the name Himavatī in the extant manuscripts. 

To arrive at the date of Sāyaṇācārya, we have to rely upon records related to Mādhavācārya  / Vidyāraṇya, for no direct evidence regarding the former is available. After much scholarly discussion it is now established that Mādhavācārya took up saṃnyāsa in the year 1377 CE.^[6] We learn that he was then eighty years old. This leads us to conclude that the year of his birth was 1295 / 1296 CE. The year of his leaving the mortal coil and attaining videha-mukti is 1386 CE.^[7] Going by these details we infer that Sāyaṇācārya was born around 1297 / 1298 CE and that he shed his mortal coil after his elder brother. He lived a full life of ninety years, of which he spent more than seven decades in literary, philosophical and administrative activities.

Because Mādhavācārya and Sāyaṇācārya were almost of the same age, the brothers developed great affection for each other. They worked in tandem, each complementing the other. They shared noble thoughts and strove together to revitalize Sanātana-dharma. One brought into fruition what the other willed. In the history of the world there are hardly any examples of brothers like these who thought with one mind and spoke a single voice. The brothers studied under the same Guru, Vidyā-tīrtha, the tenth adhipati of the Sringeri maṭha. They had immense respect for their Guru and considered him an incarnation of Maheśvara or Śiva.^[8] Although Sāyaṇācārya has expressly named only Vidyātīrtha as his preceptor, we surmise that he had studied under all of Mādhavācārya’s teachers as well: Bhāratī-tīrtha, Śrīkaṇṭha and Śaṅkarānanda.^[9]

Like his illustrious elder brother, Sāyaṇācārya was a consummate polymath. He was well-versed in the Vedas, Vedāṅgas, Dharma-śāstra, Artha-śāstra, Āyurveda, Gāndharva-veda, various Darśanas, Itihāsas and Purāṇas. From the works he has authored in most of these disciplines we understand that his scholarship was deep and wide. It would not be wrong to conjecture that he spent the first two to three decades of his life attaining mastery over various branches of knowledge. His understanding of statecraft was not limited to theory alone; he was a trained warrior and a master strategist. Several verses of the present treatise bear ample testimony to these facts, as we shall see.

2.2. Political Acumen

Mādhavācārya and Sāyaṇācārya, like many of their ancestors, were the preceptors of the Saṅgama family. The five sons of Saṅgama—Harihara I, Kampaṇa I, Bukkarāya, Mārappa and Muddappa—were the army-heads of the Hoysaḻa monarch, Ballāḻa III. They were stationed at Hospet, the northern capital of the Hoysaḻa Empire. By the year 1330 CE, the king Ballāḻa III had grown old and weak, and his son Ballāḻa IV was not competent to administer the kingdom. The whole of South India including the Hoysaḻa Empire was in disarray tormented by Islamic invasion. The Saṅgama brothers utilized this opportunity to establish the Vijayanagara Empire under the guidance of Mādhavācārya. The transfer of power from the Hoysaḻas to Saṅgamas took around fifteen years – from 1330 to 1345 CE. Śrīvīra Kekkāyi, Ballāḻa III’s queen, oversaw the smooth transfer of power.^[10]

While Mādhavācārya primarily guided Harihara I and Bukkarāya, Sāyaṇācārya guided Kampaṇa I and his son, Saṅgama II.^[11] After Mādhavācārya became an ascetic, Sāyaṇācārya took over his political responsibilities and began to guide Bukkarāya and his son, Harihara II.^[12] Kampaṇa I, stationed at Udayagiri, was impressed by Mādhavācārya’s dedicated efforts at making Vijayanagara a prosperous kingdom, and sought his guidance to lead the Empire to further glory. At the behest of Mādhavācārya he appointed Sāyaṇācārya as his minister in 1346 CE.^[13] In the ensuing years Kampaṇa I was tormented by diseases, and he requested Sāyaṇācārya to look after the young prince, Saṅgama II.^[14] During 1346–65 CE, Sāyaṇācārya stayed in Udayagiri and bore the onerous responsibility of acting as a regent to the prince and protecting the kingdom.^[15] In 1352 CE, the Coḻa king Campa Śāmbhuvarāya gathered news of the ailing Kampaṇa I and planned to annex the Vijayanagara kingdom. Sāyaṇācārya came to know of this through his elaborate network of spies. Wasting no time, he outfitted a huge army and marched towards Madurai. In a battle fought at Kāñcī, he ousted the enemy and secured victory for Vijayanagara.^[16]

Sāyaṇācārya continued to act as Saṅgama II’s regent until 1355 CE. And when the prince ascended the throne,^[17] he continued as the chief minister (1355–65 CE). After ensuring that the kingdom was secure, Sāyaṇācārya directed his younger brother Bhoganātha to assist the king, and relocated to Vijayanagara.^[18] In the course of time Bhoganātha became Saṅgama II’s narma-saciva, confidant and companion in amusement.^[19]

By this time (1355 CE) Harihara I’s rule had terminated and Bukkarāya had become the monarch under Mādhavācārya’s guidance. As the king and preceptor had a grand plan of resuscitating Sanātana-dharma, they entrusted Sāyaṇācārya with the responsibility of composing commentaries on all the Vedas. Sāyaṇācārya discharged this sacred duty and also continued to author treatises on various disciplines in the ‘Sudhānidhi’ series, which he had started earlier. The series continued even after the demise of Bukkarāya and saw its completion during the regime of Harihara II.

2.3. Literary Accomplishments

By the time Sāyaṇācārya began his literary activities, almost all branches of Indian knowledge had reached their summit in theory and practice. Apart from the Vedic corpus, a staggering body of work had emerged in disciplines such as philosophy, grammar, literary aesthetics, the arts, science, mathematics, medicine, ethics, morality, economics, polity and statecraft. The time was ripe for stock taking. Besides, the barbaric invasion by Islamic fanatics posed a threat to the traditionally accumulated fund of knowledge. Sāyaṇācārya admirably responded to the call of time at this critical juncture.

Endowed with prodigious scholarship and talent, he had all the requisite qualities to author independent works. But he charted a different course and composed digests, compendiums, compilations and commentaries in a simple yet authoritative style, with the sole objective of consolidating knowledge, preserving it intact and passing it on to posterity. Nor did he indulge in hair-splitting debates that eclipse the spirit of the śāstras. Further, Sāyaṇācārya could have easily hogged credit by authoring works in his individual capacity; but he chose to assemble a huge team of scholars and work collectively. On the one hand, knowledge had to preserved, and on the other, scholars who had been devastated by the inhuman Islamic invasion had to be given a sanctuary of peace. Indeed, the literary milieu of the Vijayanagara period, as long as it remained within Svāmī Vidyāraṇya’s pale of influence, was suffused with the same spirit: concerted effort by selfless savants to safeguard tradition.

Around a thousand years earlier the Guptas had ushered in the Golden Age of India by achieving political stability, economic prosperity, cultural vibrance, intellectual rigour, artistic sensibility and spiritual profundity. They succeeded in giving a definite shape to Sanātana-dharma. The Vijayanagara Empire, guided by Svāmī Vidyāraṇya and Sāyaṇācārya, walked on the same path as the Guptas and gave a fresh lease of life to the ageless Sanātana-dharma. Hindu Dharma as we understand and practise it today owes much to the matchless service rendered by Svāmī Vidyāraṇya and Sāyaṇācārya.

The probable chronological order of Sāyaṇācārya’s works is as follows:

1. Subhāṣita-sudhānidhi – An anthology of standalone verses organized according to the four puruṣārthas
2. Prāyaścitta-sudhānidhi (Karma-vipāka) – A work on Dharma-śāstra dealing with expiatory rites
3. Mādhavīyā Dhātuvṛtti – A treatise on Sanskrit grammar, expounding the meanings of verbal roots and their various forms
4. Āyurveda-sudhānidhi – A manual on Āyurveda
5. Alaṅkāra-sudhānidhi – A treatise on Poetics
6. Puruṣārtha-sudhānidhi – A compendium of verses and tales from the Purāṇas that capture the essence of the puruṣārthas
7. Vedārtha-prakāśa – Commentaries on the Vedas
8. Yajña-tantra-sudhānidhi – A work on Vedic rituals.

Sāyaṇācārya authored the first five works during the regimes of Kampaṇa I and Saṅgama II; the sixth and some portions of the seventh during the regime of Bukkarāya. He completed the seventh and took up the next during the regime of Harihara II.

Vedārtha-prakāśa is a commentary on all the Vedas. It is a work that has immortalized the name of its author. This monument of traditional learning is peerless in the category of Vedic exegesis. Sāyaṇācārya wrote the texts under this umbrella term in the following order:

1. Taittirīya-saṃhitā, Taittirīya-brāhmaṇa, Taittirīya-āraṇyaka
2. Ṛgveda-saṃhitā, Aitareya-brāhmaṇa, Aitareya-āraṇyaka
3. Sāmaveda-saṃhitā, Tāṇḍya-brāhmaṇa, Ṣaḍviṃśa-brāhmaṇa, Sāma-vidhāna-brāhmaṇa, Ārṣeya-brāhmaṇa, Devatādhyāya-brāhmaṇa, Chandogya-brāhmaṇa, Saṃhitopaniṣad-brāhmaṇa, Vaṃśa-brāhmaṇa
4. Śatapatha-brāhmaṇa, Kāṇva-saṃhitā
5. Atharva-saṃhitā.

In authoring these works, particularly Vedārtha-prakāśa, Sāyaṇācārya must have received help from other scholars. He must have scoured the entire country to identify scholars proficient in various branches of traditional knowledge, invited them to Vijayanagara,^[20] secured the king’s help in making arrangements for their stay and rewarding their work,^[21] discussed intricate issues of śāstra with them, sought the guidance of his elder brother Mādhavācārya in settling debates, encouraged scholars to author works in their individual capacity apart from working collectively, reviewed and edited their works, engaged himself in serious study and writing every day. It is thrilling to just imagine this great endeavour!