Vācaspati Miśra

Vācaspati Miśra was a scholar from Mithilā, in present-day Bihar, and one of the most versatile philosophers of classical India. His dates depend on a single year given in one of his works, which scholars convert either to 841 or to 976 CE; the question is still debated.

He wrote major commentaries on almost every school of his time: on Nyāya logic, in his Nyāyavārttikatātparyaṭīkā; on Sāṃkhya, in the Tattvakaumudī, the most widely read commentary on Īśvarakṛṣṇa’s verses; on Yoga, in the Tattvavaiśāradī; on Mīmāṃsā, the school of Vedic exegesis; and on Advaita Vedānta, in the Bhāmatī, a commentary on Śaṅkara’s commentary on the Brahma Sūtras. Later tradition called him “independent master of all systems”.

He was remarkable for expounding each school from within, faithfully and with sympathy, as its own best advocate. The Bhāmatī founded one of the two main schools of later Advaita, named after the work. A well-known legend says that he named it after his wife, who had served him without his noticing through the years he spent writing it.

His Tattvakaumudī, short and lucid, became the standard introduction to Sāṃkhya in the traditional curriculum and the commentary through which most later readers, Indian and European, first met the school.