Aryadeva


Āryadeva , was a disciple of Nagarjuna and author of several important Mahayana Madhyamaka Buddhist texts. He is also known as Kanadeva, recognized as the 15th patriarch in Chan Buddhism, and as "Bodhisattva Deva" in Sri Lanka.

Biography

According to one source, Aryadeva was born as the son of a Sinhalese king. A biography that was translated by Kumarajiva into Chinese states that Aryadeva was born into a South Indian Brahmin family. He is considered the co-founder of Mahayana philosophy. Aryadeva was a student of Nagarjuna and contributed significantly to the Madhyamaka school. According to the Drikung Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism, Garchen Rinpoche is the current incarnation of Aryadeva.

Works

Most of Aryadeva's works were not preserved in the original Sanskrit but mainly in Tibetan and Chinese translations. His best-known text is probably the Catusataka, in sixteen chapters of twenty-five stanzas each. Several important works of esoteric Buddhism are attributed to Aryadeva. Contemporary research suggests that these works are datable to a significantly later period in Buddhist history, but the tradition of which they are a part maintains that they are the work of the Madhyamaka Aryadeva. Traditional historians, 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.

Texts attributed to Aryadeva