Vijnaneshwara was a prominent

jurist A jurist is a person with expert knowledge of law; someone who analyzes and comments on law. This person is usually a specialist legal scholar, mostly (but not always) with a formal education in law (a law degree) and often a Lawyer, legal prac ...

of the first millennium CE

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

. His treatise, the '' Mitakshara,'' dealt with inheritance, and is one of the most influential legal treatises in

Hindu law Hindu law, as a historical term, refers to the code of laws applied to Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs in British India. Hindu law, in modern scholarship, also refers to the legal theory, jurisprudence and philosophical reflections on the na ...

. Mitakshara is the treatise on

Yājñavalkya Smṛti The ''Yajnavalkya Smriti'' (, IAST: ') is one of the many Dharma-related texts of Hinduism composed in Sanskrit. It is dated between the 3rd and 5th century CE, and belongs to the Dharmashastra tradition. The text was composed after the Manusmr ...

, named after a sage of the same name. Vijnaneshwara was born in the village of Masimadu, near

Basavakalyan Basavakalyana is a historical city and municipal council in the Bidar District of the Indian state of Karnataka. It was the capital of Western Chalukya Empire, Kalyani Chalukya and Kalachuris of Kalyani two dynasties. It is famous for the world ...

Karnataka Karnataka ( ) is a States and union territories of India, state in the southwestern region of India. It was Unification of Karnataka, formed as Mysore State on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, 1956, States Re ...

. He lived in the court of king Vikramaditya VI (1076-1126), the

Western Chalukya Empire The Western Chalukya Empire ( ) ruled most of the Deccan Plateau, western Deccan, South India, between the 10th and 12th centuries. This Kannada dynasty is sometimes called the ''Kalyani Chalukya'' after its regal capital at Kalyani, today's ...

monarch.

References

Vijnaneshwara
Ancient Indian law 12th-century Indian writers Hindu law People from Kalaburagi Writers from Karnataka Indian male writers {{India-law-bio-stub