A History of Sanskrit Literature c13.29

c13.29

The best-known commentator of the *Mahābhārata* is NĪLAKAṆṬHA, who lived at Kūrpara, to the west of the Godāvarī, in Mahārāshṭra, and, according to Burnell, belongs to the sixteenth century. Older than Nīlakaṇṭha, who quotes him, is ARJUNA MIÇRA, whose commentary, along with that of Nīlakaṇṭha, appears in an edition of the *Mahābhārata* begun at Calcutta in 1875. The earliest extant commentator of the great epic is SARVAJNA NĀRĀYAṆA, large fragments of whose notes have been preserved, and who cannot have written later than in the second half of the fourteenth century, but may be somewhat older.