In the book, Mādhavāchārya reviews the sixteen philosophical systems current in India at the time, and gives what appeared to him to be their most important tenets, and the principal arguments by which their followers endeavoured to maintain them.
According to Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the Sarvadarśanasaṅgraha "sketches sixteen systems of thought so as to exhibit a gradually ascending series, culminating in the Advaita Vedanta (or non-dualism)."
[6] Some accounts identify Madhavacharya or Vidyaranya with Madhava, the brother of Sāyaṇa, a Mimamsa scholar from the Vijayanagara Empire.
[9] According to the Sringeri account, the brothers Madhava and Sayana came to Vidyaranya to receive his blessings, and completed his unfinished Veda bhashyas.
Channibhatta was a younger contemporary of Sāyaṇa and Madhava, author of a sub-commentary on the Pañchapadikavivarana, and worked in the Vijayanagara court under the patronage of Harihara Maharaja.
Yet in the absence of any original work of lokayatikas, it is one of the very few sources of information available today on materialist philosophy in ancient India.