Sayana

Sāyaṇa (or Sāyaṇācārya) was a 14th-century Sanskrit scholar and high official of the Vijayanagara empire in south India, celebrated as the greatest traditional commentator on the Vedas. Working under the patronage of the Vijayanagara kings, and in collaboration with a circle of scholars associated with his brother Mādhava (Vidyāraṇya), he produced commentaries (bhāṣyas) on the Saṃhitās and Brāhmaṇas of all four Vedas, most famously on the Ṛgveda. His commentaries became the standard traditional interpretation and were heavily relied upon by 19th-century European editors and translators such as Max Müller. He died in 1387; his birth year is not recorded, though he flourished in the mid-to-late 14th century. He is remembered above all as the scholar who made the Vedas systematically intelligible to later generations.