Vijnaneshvara

Vijnaneshvara was a Hindu legal scholar who lived in the Deccan region of India during the reign of the Western Chalukya king Vikramaditya VI, who ruled from 1076 to 1126, and who is traditionally associated with a village near Basavakalyan in present day Karnataka. He is known for the Mitakshara, his commentary on the Yajnavalkya Smriti, which set out detailed rules of inheritance and became one of the most influential legal treatises in the Hindu legal tradition. The school of Hindu law built on the Mitakshara's interpretation of inheritance rights, distinguished from the rival Bengal based Dayabhaga school, went on to govern personal law questions across most of India for centuries, including through the period of British colonial rule.