Nīlakantha's instruments of war:Modern,vernacular,barbarous

Abstract

The seventeenth century Benares-based intellectual, NīlakanÚha Caturdhara, wrote what is still the most widely used Sanskrit commentary on the Mahābhārata. In the commentary Nīlakantha sometimes explains the epicÌs instruments of war in contemporary terms—as cannons and muskets, for example. He also uses terms from vernacular, even ÎbarbarousÌ, languages in his glosses. Rather than ÎtypicalÌ of ÎtraditionalÌ Sanskrit commentators, such interpretations by Nīlakantha should be understood as self-consciously innovative. The innovations appear primarily in the epicÌs descriptions of the fortifications of cities. Placement of Nīlakantha in his historical and literary context, most saliently in his early modern context, provides the most meaningful explanation of this feature of the commentary.