A History of Indian Medical Literature v3.c43.s2.38

v3.c43.s2.38

The author Mādhava Bhiṣaj was a son of Indrakara and lived at Śilāhrada. D.Ch. Bhattacharyya has observed²⁹⁷ that Śilāhrada appears to have been a famous place, at a considerable distance from Pāṭaliputra, for it is mentioned in an illustration in Vācaspatimiśra’s Nyāyakaṇikā:²⁹⁸ “Someone who has obtained a favour at Pāṭaliputra will certainly not remember it without confusion at Śilāhrada”. The ancient Śilāhrada has been identified as the modern Pattharghaṭṭā near Bhāgalpur in Bihār, at a certain distance from Paṭnā, the ancient Pāṭaliputra.²⁹⁹ This Pattharghaṭṭā is the site of the Vikramaśila university which flourished during the Pāla dynasty.³⁰⁰ The vernacular names of medicinal plants, added to the Sanskrit synonyms of the Paryāyaratnamālā in the margin of the text, are in favour of assigning a Bengal origin to the author,³⁰¹ if they indeed derive from him and have not been added later.