  Aside from a commentary entitled Akutobhaya (Afraid of nothing), which is traditionally ascribed to Nāgārjuna but the authorship of which is questioned by modern scholars, the earliest extant commentary to Nāgārjuna’s MMK is the Madhyamakavṛtti by Buddhapālita (ca 470–ca 540). The original Sanskit of this text is not known to exist, but it is still extant in Tibetan translation. Buddhapālita’s commentary, like Akutobhaya stays close to the text upon which it is a commentary. The MMK is written in verse, and Buddhapālita’s commentary places the words of the verse text into standard prose word order and offers glosses to disambiguate potentially confusing words.  Like the MMK itself, Buddhapālita’s commentary does not offer a positive position but rather shows the untenability of all the apparently possible solutions to the philosophical questions taken up for examination. The principal method of examining a position in MMK and in Buddhapālita’s commentary is to show that unwelcome consequences are entailed by the position under consideration.