[1][2] He was a member of a Tulu Brahmin family Nīlamana residing in a village called Guṇavatī near Gokarna, Karnataka, on the west coast of India.
[1][2][3] The best known work of Vidyamadhava is Muhūrtadarśana, a treatise in fifteen chapters dealing with fixing the most auspicious day and time for performing all sorts of religious and other ceremonies.
The complete text of Vidyamādhavīyaṃ with the commentary Muhūrtadarśana-dīpikā by Viṣṇuśarman edited by Dr Shama Sastri has been digitized and is now available in the Internet Archive for free down load.
The titles of the fifteen chapters in the book give an idea of the topics discussed in the work: saṃjñā (sign, signal), doṣa (harm), apavāda (defame), guṇa (virtue), balābala (strength and weakness), niṣekādi (insemination etc.
), vidyopanayana (initiation to learning, sacred thread ceremony), vivāha (marriage), vāstu (architecture), kṛṣi-bījāvāpa (agriculture, sowing), deva-pratiṣṭhā (consecration of idols), yātrā (travel), prakīrṇaka (tuft of hair), tārādi-lakṣaṇa (indications by stars etc.