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Aryadeva



 
 
Aryadeva (3rd Century CE), was a disciple of Nagarjuna
Nagarjuna

File:Nagarjuna at Samye Ling Monastery.JPGFile:Nagarjuna.JPGAcharya Nagarjuna was an Indian philosophy and the founder of the Madhyamaka school of Mahayana Buddhism....
 and author of several important Mahayana Madhyamaka
Madhyamaka

Madhyamaka is a Buddhist Mahayana tradition systematized by Nagarjuna. Nagarjuna may have arrived at his positions from a desire to achieve a consistent exegesis of Gautama Buddha's doctrine as recorded in the Nikayas....
 Buddhist texts. He is also known as Kanadeva the 15th patriarch in the Zen tradition and Bodhisattva Deva in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is an island country in South Asia, located about off the southern coast of India....
 where he was born as the son of a king. Some Chinese sources however, suggest he was born in Southern India in a Brahmanical family.

Most of Aryadeva's works were not preserved in the original Sanskrit, but they mainly survived in Tibetan and Chinese translations. His best-known text is probably the Catusataka (400 verses), in sixteen chapters of twenty-five stanzas each. One of his best-known students is Asvagho?a.

Several important works of esoteric Buddhism (most notably the Caryamelapakapradipa or "Lamp that Integrates the Practices") are attributed to Aryadeva.






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Aryadeva (3rd Century CE), was a disciple of Nagarjuna
Nagarjuna

File:Nagarjuna at Samye Ling Monastery.JPGFile:Nagarjuna.JPGAcharya Nagarjuna was an Indian philosophy and the founder of the Madhyamaka school of Mahayana Buddhism....
 and author of several important Mahayana Madhyamaka
Madhyamaka

Madhyamaka is a Buddhist Mahayana tradition systematized by Nagarjuna. Nagarjuna may have arrived at his positions from a desire to achieve a consistent exegesis of Gautama Buddha's doctrine as recorded in the Nikayas....
 Buddhist texts. He is also known as Kanadeva the 15th patriarch in the Zen tradition and Bodhisattva Deva in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is an island country in South Asia, located about off the southern coast of India....
 where he was born as the son of a king. Some Chinese sources however, suggest he was born in Southern India in a Brahmanical family.

Most of Aryadeva's works were not preserved in the original Sanskrit, but they mainly survived in Tibetan and Chinese translations. His best-known text is probably the Catusataka (400 verses), in sixteen chapters of twenty-five stanzas each. One of his best-known students is Asvagho?a.

Several important works of esoteric Buddhism (most notably the Caryamelapakapradipa or "Lamp that Integrates the Practices") are attributed to Aryadeva. Contemporary research suggests that these works are datable to a significantly later period in Buddhist history (late ninth or early tenth century), but the tradition of which they are a part maintains that they are (at least in some measure) the work of the Madhyamaka Aryadeva. Traditional historians (for example, the 17th century Tibetan Taranatha
Taranatha

Taranatha was a Lama of the Jonang school of Tibetan Buddhism. He is widely considered its most remarkable scholar and exponent....
), aware of the chronological difficulties involved, account for the anachronism via a variety of theories, such as the propagation of later writings via mystical revelation. A useful summary of this tradition, its literature, and historiography may be found in Wedemeyer 2007.

According to the Drikung Kagyü school of Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism

Tibetan Buddhism is the body of Buddhism religious doctrine and institutions characteristic of Tibet and certain regions of the Himalayas, including northern Nepal, Bhutan, and India ....
, Garchen Rinpoche
Garchen Rinpoche

His Eminence Garchen Rinpoche is a famous Tibetan Buddhism teacher in the Drikung Kagyu lineage. He is believed to be an incarnation of the thirteenth century as the Siddha Gar Chodingpa which was a heart-disciple of the founder of the Drikung Kagyu lineage who was incarnated as Mahasiddha Aryadeva in ancient India - the lotus-born discipe of Naga...
 is the current incarnation of Aryadeva.

Texts Attributed to Aryadeva

  • Catuhsataka-shastra-nama-karika (the Four Hundred Verses) was translated to English as Aryadeva's Catuhsaka. On the Bodhisattva's Cultivation of Merit and Knowledge by Karen Lang. Snow Lion Publications published the Four Hundred Verses as Yogic Deeds of Bodhisattvas. A new edition will be published in 2008 titled: Aryadeva's Four Hundred Stanzas on the Middle Way.
  • Sata(ka)shastra (Treatise on the One Hundred Songs)
  • Aksarasataka (One Hundred Syllables) is sometimes attributed to Nagarjuna
  • Hastavalaprakarana (Hair in the Hand) is sometimes attributed to Dignaga and was translated to English as On Voidness. A Study on Buddhist Nihilism by Fernando Tola and Carmen Dragonetti.


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