Ishvara Pratyabhijna Vimarshini Part 1 (KSTS 22)

freely drawn upon by the latest commentators such as Charitra-vardhana, Mallinātha, etc.

It is called the Sāratikā Essence of Commentaries, the essence of commentaries or Sandeha-vishaushadha Antidote against the poison of doubts—an antidote against the poison of doubts—and has been written in the Kathambhūtini a specific question-and-answer style of commentary style, i. e. in a manner quite peculiar to Kashmir and North-western India, where the study of the commentaries of our author is much in vogue. The Kathambhūtini style of writing commentaries is an analytical one (Khaṇḍānvayā parsing the sentence structure) and is quite different from the commentary called Daṇḍānvayā running prose analysis, the running prose intermixed with explanatory quotations here and there. The former explains the meaning of the stanzas in the form of questions and answers—in a way not unlike the modern direct method, which makes the whole idea of the stanza quite intelligible even to the average reader.

Writing of commentaries in the form of questions and answers seems to have been the practice in Kashmir during the time of Vallabhadeva—an originality claimed perhaps by the Kashmiri writers only; and this has an advantage over other forms of commentaries in as much as it explains in a clear