An Indian Buddhist philosopher, dramatist, poet and orator. Born in Saketa in northern India, he is believed to have been the first Sanskrit dramatist, and is considered the greatest Indian poet prior to Kālidāsa. He was the most famous in a group of Buddhist court writers, whose epics rivalled the contemporary Ramayana. Whereas much of Buddhist literature prior to the time of Aśvaghoṣa had been composed in Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, Aśvaghoṣa wrote in Classical Sanskrit. He composed an epic life of the Buddha called Buddhacharita (Acts of the Buddha). The Tang-era Chinese monk I-tsing (Yijing) writes that in his time, the Buddhacarita was "extensively read in all the five parts of India and in the countries of the South Sea (Sumātra, Jāva and the neighbouring islands). Ashvaghosha clothed manifold notions and ideas in few words, which so delighted the heart of his reader that he never wearied of perusing the poem. Moreover it was regarded as a virtue to read it, inasmuch as it contained the noble doctrine in a neat compact form." It described in 28 chapters the whole life of the Buddha from his birth until his entry into parinirvāna.

 

Text source: Wikipedia (edited). This version of Wikipedia content is published here under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Left: A Chinese-style portrait of Ashvaghosha. Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Image author: Unknown. Image license: Public domain. All books in the gallery immediately below are by Ashvaghosha unless otherwise noted.

Widely regarded as one of the most important Buddhist philosophers and, along with his disciple Āryadeva, as the founder of the Madhyamaka school of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Nāgārjuna is also credited with developing the philosophy of the Prajñāpāramitā sūtras and, according to some sources, with having revealed these scriptures in the world after having recovered them from the world of the nāgas (water spirits often depicted in the form of serpent-like humans). Very little is reliably known of his life, since surviving accounts were written in Chinese and Tibetan centuries after his death. According to some accounts, he was originally from South India. Some scholars believe that Nāgārjuna was an advisor to a king of the Satavahana dynasty. Archaeological evidence at Amarāvatī indicates that if this is true, the king may have been Yajña Śrī Śātakarṇi, who ruled between 167 and 196 CE. On the basis of this association, Nāgārjuna is conventionally placed at around 150–250 CE. According to a 4th/5th-century CE biography translated by Kumārajīva, Nāgārjuna was born into a Brahmin family in Vidarbha, a region of Maharashtra, and later became a Buddhist. The Mūlamadhyamakakārikā is Nāgārjuna's best-known work. Nāgārjuna's major thematic focus in this text is the concept of śūnyatā, translated into English as "emptiness", which brings together other key Buddhist doctrines, particularly anātman, or "not-self," and pratītyasamutpāda, "dependent origination", to refute the metaphysics of some of his contemporaries. For Nāgārjuna, as for the Buddha in the early texts, it is not merely sentient beings that are "selfless" or non-substantial; all phenomena (dhammas) are without any svabhāva, literally "own-being", "self-nature", or "inherent existence" and thus without any underlying essence. They are empty of being independently existent; thus the heterodox theories of svabhāva circulating at the time were refuted on the basis of the doctrines of early Buddhism. This is so because all things arise always dependently: not by their own power, but by depending on conditions leading to their coming into existence, as opposed to being. Nāgārjuna means by real any entity which has a nature of its own (svabhāva), which is not produced by causes (akrtaka), which is not dependent on anything else (paratra nirapeksha). Chapter 24, verse 14 of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā provides one of Nāgārjuna's most famous quotations on emptiness and co-arising:

 

 

Text source: Wikipedia (edited). This version of Wikipedia content is published here under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Left: A Tibetan distemper painting depicts Nāgārjuna (l) and Aryadeva (r) sitting on a floating platform; Nāgārjuna receives a book from a nāga (mythic serpent) emerging from the water. Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Image author: Unknown. Image license: Public domain. All books in the gallery immediately below are by Nāgārjuna unless otherwise noted.

One of the most important spiritual figures of Mahayana Buddhism and the founder of the Yogacara school, Asanga and his half-brother Vasubandhu are traditionally regarded as the major classical Indian Sanskrit exponents of Mahayana Abhidharma and Vijñanavada thought as well as Mahayana teachings on the bodhisattva path. According to later hagiographies, Asanga was born as the son of a high caste father in Puruṣapura (present day Peshawar in Pakistan), which at that time was part of the ancient kingdom of Gandhāra. Originally, he may have been a member of the Mahīśāsaka school or the Mūlasarvāstivāda school, but later converted to Mahāyāna. Vasubandhu, Asanga's half-brother, was a monk from the Sarvāstivāda school, and is said to have taken up Mahāyāna Buddhism after a meeting with Asanga and one of Asanga's disciples. Asanga spent many years in serious meditation and study under various teachers, but, according to the narrative of the 6th c. CE monk Paramārtha, was increasingly unsatisfied with his understanding. Paramārtha then recounts how he used his meditative powers (siddhis) to travel to the Tuṣita Heaven to receive teachings from the Bodhisattva Maitreya on emptiness, and how he continued to travel there to receive further teachings from Maitreya on the Mahayana sutras. Modern scholars disagree on whether the figure of Maitreya in this story is to be considered as Asanga's human teacher or as a visionary experience in meditation. Scholars such as Frauwallner held that this figure, sometimes termed Maitreya-nātha, was an actual historical person and teacher. Other scholars argue that this figure was the tutelary deity of Asanga (Iṣṭa-devatā) as well as numerous other Yogacara masters. Whatever the case, Asanga's experiences led him to travel around India and propagate the Mahayana teachings. According to Taranatha's History of Buddhism in India, he founded 25 Mahayana monasteries in India. Asanga went on to write some key treatises (shastras) of the Yogācāra school. Over time, many different works were attributed to him (or to Maitreya, with Asanga as transmitter), although there are discrepancies between the Chinese and Tibetan traditions of attribution. Modern scholars have also problematized and questioned these attributions after critical textual study of the sources.

 

Text source: Wikipedia (edited). This version of Wikipedia content is published here under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Left: A carved wooden portrait of Muchaku (Asanga) by Unkei, a Japanese sculptor of the Kei school, dating to 1212 and preserved at the Kōfuku-ji Temple in Nara, Japan. Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Image author: Unknown. Image license: Public domain. All books in the gallery immediately below are by Asanga unless otherwise noted.

An influential Buddhist monk, philosopher, and scholar who wrote commentaries on the Abhidharma from the perspectives of the Sarvastivada and Sautrāntika schools. Born in Purusapura in present-day Pakistan, Vasubandhu was the half brother of Asanga, another key personage in the founding of the Yogacara philosophy. Historical evidence indicates that he was contemporaneous with Chandragupta I, father of Samudragupta, which places him in the 4th century CE. Vasubandhu initially studied with the Buddhist Sarvastivada (or Vaibhāṣika) school which was dominant in Gandhara, and later moved to Kashmir to study with the heads of the orthodox Sarvastivada branch there. After returning home, he lectured on Abhidharma and composed the Abhidharmakośakārikā (Verses on the Treasury of the Abhidharma), a verse distillation of Sarvastivada Abhidharma teachings, which analyzed all factors of experience into their constituent dharmas (phenomenal events). However, Vasubandhu had been questioning Sarvastivada orthodoxy for some time, and went on to study with the Sautrāntika (Dārṣtāntika) teacher, Manoratha. He then published an auto-commentary to his own verses, criticizing the Sarvastivada system from a Sautrāntika viewpoint. He is later said to have converted to Mahayana beliefs under the influence of his brother Asanga, whereupon he composed a number of voluminous treatises, especially on Yogacara doctrines and Mahayana sutras. Most influential in the East Asian Buddhist tradition have been the Vimśatikāvijñaptimātratāsiddhi (Twenty Verses on Consciousness Only), with its commentary (Viṃśatikāvṛtti), the Triṃśikā-vijñaptimātratā (Thirty Verses on Consciousness Only) and Trisvabhāvanirdeśa (Exposition of the Three Natures). Vasubandhu thus became a major Mahayana master, scholar and debater, famously defeating the Samkhya philosophers in debate in front of the Gupta King Vikramaditya at Ayodhya, who is said to have rewarded him with 300,000 pieces of gold. Vasubandhu used the money he made from his royal patronage and his debating victories to build Buddhist monasteries and hospitals. After his conversion to Mahayana Buddhism, along with his half-brother, Asanga, he was also one of the main founders of the Yogacara school. Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakośakārikā (Commentary on the Treasury of the Abhidharma) is still widely used in Tibetan and East Asian Buddhism as the major source for non-Mahayana Abhidharma philosophy. His philosophical verse works set forth the standard for the Indian Yogacara metaphysics of "appearance only" (vijñapti-mātra), which has been variously described as a form of "epistemological idealism", a precursor of phenomenology, or close to Immanuel Kant's transcendental idealism.

Text source: Wikipedia (edited). This version of Wikipedia content is published here under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Left: Vasubandhu pictured as a Chan/Zen patriarch in a Chinese illustration. Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Image author: Unknown. Image license: Public domain. All books in the gallery immediately below are by Vasubandhu unless otherwise noted.

A Buddhist scholar of the Madhyamaka school and a noted commentator on both the works of Nagarjuna and those of his main disciple, Aryadeva. Very little is known about Chandrakirti's life; Tibetan sources state that he was born in Samanta, in southern India, and was a student of Kamalabuddhi. He is traditionally associated with Nalanda Mahavihara, a large and significant monastery in the kingdom of Magadha, where he may have been a monk. Chandrakirti was the most famous member of what the Tibetans came to call the Uma Thelgyur school, an interpretive approach to Madhyamaka thought typically translated into Sanskrit as the Prāsaṅgika, or into English as the "Consequentialist" or "Dialecticist" school. In his writings, Chandrakirti defended Buddhapālita against Bhāviveka, criticizing the latter's acceptance of autonomous syllogism. He also offered refutations of a number of earlier Buddhist views such as the Vijñānavāda or Yogācāra school. He also attacked the views of the school of Dignāga for attempting to ground their epistemology on foundational propositions. Chandrakirti's works include the Prasannapadā, a commentary on Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā and the Madhyamakāvatāra, his supplement to Nagarjuna's text and its auto-commentary. The Madhyamakāvatāra is still used as the main sourcebook by most Tibetan monastic colleges in their studies of śūnyatā ("emptiness") and the philosophy of the Madhyamaka school.

 

Text source: Wikipedia (edited). This version of Wikipedia content is published here under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

An influential Indian Buddhist philosopher who worked at Nālandā. He was one of the key scholars of epistemology (pramana) in Buddhist philosophy, and is associated with the Yogācāra and Sautrāntika schools. He was also one of the primary theorists of Buddhist atomism. His works influenced the scholars of Mīmāṃsā, Nyaya and Shaivism schools of Hindu philosophy as well as scholars of Jainism. Dharmakīrti's Pramāṇavārttika, his largest and most important work, was very influential in India and Tibet as a central text on pramana ('valid knowledge instruments') and was widely commented on by various Indian and Tibetan scholars. His texts remain part of the regular curriculum in the monasteries of Tibetan Buddhism. Little is known for certain about the life of Dharmakirti; Tibetan hagiographies suggest he was a Brahmin born in South India and was the nephew of the Mīmāṃsā scholar Kumārila Bhaṭṭa. When he was young, Kumārila spoke abusively towards Dharmakirti as he was taking his brahminical garments. This led Dharmakirti to take the robes of the Buddhist order instead, resolving to "vanquish all the heretics." As a student of Buddhism, he first studied under Isvarasena, and later moved to Nālandā where he interacted with 6th century Dharmapala. However, the accuracy of the Tibetan hagiographies is uncertain, so most scholars place his lifetime between 600–660 CE. Dharmakirti worked at Nalanda as a lay Buddhist, not as an ordained monk, and his work often reflects his belief that no one would understand the value of his work and that his efforts would soon be forgotten; history proved his fears unfounded. Dharmakīrti's philosophy is based on the need to establish a theory of logical validity and epistemic certainty grounded in causality. Following Dignāga's Pramāṇasamuccaya, Dharmakīrti also holds that there are only two instruments of knowledge or 'valid cognition' (pramāṇa): "perception" (pratyaksa) and "inference" (anumāṇa). Perception is a non-conceptual knowing of particulars which is bound by causality, while inference is reasonable, linguistic and conceptual.

 

Text source: Wikipedia (edited). This version of Wikipedia content is published here under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Left: A portrait of Dharmakirti in a Tibetan illustration. Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Image author: Unknown. Image license: Public domain.

An 8th-century CE Indian Buddhist monk, philosopher, and scholar active at Nalanda. He was an adherent of the Madhyamaka philosophy of Nagarjuna and is particularly renowned as the author of the Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra. According to Pema Chödrön, "Śāntideva was not well liked at Nalanda... Apparently he was one of those people who didn't show up for anything, never studying or coming to practice sessions. His fellow monks said that his three 'realizations' were eating, sleeping, and shitting." After being goaded into giving a talk to the entire monastic body, Śāntideva delivered the Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra (The Way of the Bodhisattva). A variety of English translations of this work exist, sometimes glossed as A Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life or Entering the Path of Enlightenment. It is a long poem describing the entire process of enlightenment, from the first thought of liberation to the attainment of full buddhahood, and is still studied by Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhists today.

 

Text source: Wikipedia (edited). This version of Wikipedia content is published here under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Left: A portrait of Śāntideva in a 19th c. Tibetan illustration. Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Image author: Unknown. Image license: Public domain.