The Ashtavakra Gita presents itself as a dialogue between the sage Ashtavakra and King Janaka of Videha, both of whom are already familiar figures in earlier Sanskrit literature. Ashtavakra is known from the Mahabharata as a precocious, physically deformed sage endowed with profound spiritual insight, while Janaka appears in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad as a philosopher-king deeply engaged in inquiry into ultimate reality. Within this literary frame, the text portrays Ashtavakra imparting direct non-dual wisdom to Janaka, culminating in immediate liberation through Self-knowledge. This setting situates the work within the broader tradition of royal-sage dialogues that explore brahma-vidya in a concentrated and dramatic form.

From a historical and philological standpoint, the precise date of the Ashtavakra Gita cannot be fixed with certainty, yet a broad scholarly consensus places it in the early medieval period. The most common estimates range roughly between the 7th and 10th centuries of the Common Era, with some extending the window slightly later, all agreeing that it is a post-Upanishadic composition. Its Sanskrit is relatively polished and straightforward, closer to later literary and philosophical styles than to the archaic idiom of the earliest Upanishads, and its doctrine presupposes a fully developed Advaita Vedanta. The text belongs to the classical Advaitic milieu, appearing after the foundational systematization of Advaita and reflecting a mature, radical non-dualism that emphasizes world-negation and instantaneous liberation through insight.

Regarding authorship, traditional accounts attribute the work to Rishi Ashtavakra himself, treating the dialogue as his direct teaching to Janaka. This attribution functions less as a historical claim and more as a way of conferring scriptural authority, aligning the text with revered figures from epic and Upanishadic lore. Modern scholarship, however, regards the Ashtavakra Gita as an anonymous Advaita treatise that adopts Ashtavakra and Janaka as literary personae rather than historical interlocutors. The real author remains unknown, and the text is best understood as a later Advaitic composition that draws on earlier narrative traditions while articulating one of the most uncompromising expressions of non-dual Self-knowledge in Sanskrit spiritual literature.