Nilakantha came from a family of astrologer-astronomers that belonged to the Gargya-gotra (clan), and originated from Dharmapura, a town located on the banks of the Narmada River in central India.
[1] In the 16th century, the Mughal Emperor Akbar's minister Todaramallla sponsored the compilation of Todarananda (Ṭoḍarānanda, or Todaranandam), the most extensive encyclopedia of science from pre-modern India.
[4] An analysis by Ola Wikander and Martin Gansten suggests that the Shodasha-yogadhyaya (Ṣoḍaśayogādhyāya) chapter of Samjna-tantra is based on far older sources, and this may be true of the entire book.
[4] It is possible that Samjna-tantra and Varsha-tantra were the titles of two earlier texts written by the 13th century writer Samara-simha, and along with Prashna-tantra, were collectively known as Tājika-shastra (Tājikaśāstra).
Nilakantha or one of his students may have compiled the hybrid version of Prashna-tantra to complement the two volumes of Tajika-Nilakanthi, by including excerpts from other texts to the original work.
These other texts include mainly non-Tajika Sanskrit works such as Bhattotpala's Prashna-jnana, Padma-prabha-suri's Bhuvana-dipaka, Narayana-dasa Siddha's Prashna-vaishnava, Prthyu-yashas's Shatpanchashika, Varaha-mihira's Brhadyatra, Ramachandra's Samara-sara, Yaska's Nirukta, Prashna-chintamani, Prashna-dipaka, Prashna-pradipa, Trailokya-prakasha, and Jnana-muktavali, among others.