Sayana (IAST: Sāyaṇa, also called Sāyaṇācārya; died 1387) was a 14th-century Sanskrit Mimamsa scholar[1][2][3] from the Vijayanagara Empire of peninsular India, near modern day Bellary, Karnataka.
[18] This conception of the Veda, as a repertoire to be mastered and performed, takes precedence over the internal meaning or "autonomous message of the hymns.
A new edition, prepared by the Vaidik Samshodhan Mandala (Vedic Research Institute) Pune, under the general editor V. K. Rajwade, was published in 1933 in four volumes.
[20] He has also written many lesser manuals called Sudhanidhis dealing with Prayaschitta (expiation), Yajnatantra (ritual), Purushartha (aims of human endeavour), Subhashita (Collection of moral sayings), Ayurveda (Indian traditional medicine), Sangita Sara (The essence of music), Prayaschitra, Alankara, and Dhatuvrddhi (grammar).
"[23] Sayana's commentary preserved traditional Indian understandings and explanations of the Rigveda,[24] though it also contains mistakes and contradictions.
[28] His contemporaries Pischel and Geldner were outspoken about the value of Sayana's commentary: German scholars Pischel and Geldner have expressed in unequivocal terms their opinion that in the matter of Vedic exegesis greater reliance ought to be placed on the orthodox Indian tradition represented by Yaska and Sayana than on modern philological methods.
According to Jan Gonda, the translations of the Rigveda published by Griffith and Wilson were "defective", suffering from their reliance on Sayana.