Blackwell Reference Online

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Candrakīrti (c. 580–660 ce) is a central figure in the development of Indian Madyha— maka Buddhist philosophy and of Indo-Tibetan Mahāyāna Buddhist doxography. Very little is known about his life. According to the Mahāyāna biographical tradition, he was born and ordained in south India and taught at Nalanda University, for centuries the greatest seat of Indian academic life, where he rose to the position of Abbot.Candrakīrti's philosophical corpus comprises four important commentaries – one on Āryadeva's Four Hundred Stanzas, one on Nāgārjuna's Sixty Stanzas on Reasoning, one on Nāgārjuna's Seventy Stanzas on Emptiness, and his most important commentarial work Prasannapadā, a commentary on Nāgārjuna's Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way. His major autonomous work is Entry into the Middle Way with its extensive autocommentary. He also wrote a treatise on Sanskrit grammar and two brief philosophical treatises, Entry into the Wisdom of the Middle Way and Treatise on the Five Aggregates. Of these, only Prasannapadā and the treatise on grammar survive in the original Sanskrit. The remainder are preserved in canonical Tibetan translations.The analysis that Candrakīrti's commentaries provide of earlier conflicting commentaries on Nāgārjuna's seminal work and Candrakīrti's philosophical understanding of both the madhyamaka and the Cittamātra schools of Buddhist philosophy were adopted ... log in or subscribe to read full text