Aryadeva
Āryadeva , was a Mahayana Buddhist monk, a disciple of Nagarjuna and a Madhyamaka philosopher. Most sources agree that he was from "Siṃhala", which some scholars identify with Sri Lanka. After Nagarjuna, he is considered to be the next most important figure of the Indian Madhyamaka school.
Āryadeva's writings are important sources of Madhyamaka in East Asian Buddhism. His Catuḥśataka was influential on Madhyamaka in India and China and his *Śataka and Dvādaśamukhaśāstra were important sources for the East Asian Madhyamaka school. Āryadeva is also known as Kanadeva, recognized as the 15th patriarch in Chan/Zen Buddhism and some Sinhalese sources also mention an elder called Deva which may also be the same person. He is known for his association with the Nalanda monastery in modern-day Bihar, India.
Biography
The earliest biographical sources on Aryadeva state that he was a Buddhist monk who became a student of Nagarjuna and was skilled in debate.According to Karen Lang:
The earliest information we have about the life of Aryadeva occurs in the hagiography translated into Chinese by the Central Asian monk Kumarajiva. It tells us that he was born into a Brahmin family in south India and became the spiritual son of Nagarjuna. Aryadeva became so skilled in debate that he could defeat all his opponents and convert them to Buddhism. One defeated teacher’s student sought him out and murdered him in the forest where he had retired to write. The dying Aryadeva forgave him and converted him to Buddhism with an eloquent discourse on suffering.Lang also discusses Xuanzang's writings which mention Aryadeva:
He reports that Aryadeva came to south India from the island of Simhala because of his compassion for the ignorant people of India. He met the aging Nagarjuna at his residence on Black Bee Mountain, located southwest of the Satavahana capital, and became his most gifted student. Nagarjuna helped Aryadeva prepare for debate against Brahmanical teachers who had defeated Buddhist monks in the northeastern city of Vaisali for the previous twelve years. Aryadeva went to Vaisali and defeated all his opponents in less than an hour.Tom Tillemans also notes that Aryadeva's origins in Siṃhaladvīpa are supported by his commentator Candrakīrti, and "may possibly be confirmed by references in the Ceylonese chronicles Dīpavaṃsa and Mahāvaṃsa to a “Deva” who lived in the second half of the third century at the time when the Indian Vetullavāda sect of Great Vehicle Buddhism was temporarily implanted in Śrī Laṅka."
Works
Most of Āryadeva's works were not preserved in the original Sanskrit but mainly in Tibetan and Chinese translations.Four Hundred Verses
The Catuḥśataka śāstra kārikā is Āryadeva's main work. It is available in fragmentary Sanskrit, in Xuanzang's Chinese translation of the second part only, and in a full Tibetan translation.It is a work of sixteen chapters. David Seyfort Ruegg outlines the content as follows:
Elimination of the erroneous positing of things as permanent, pleasant, pure, and self , The Bodhisattva's practice. Elimination of the defilements which hinder the preceding, Elimination of attachment to the enjoyment of seemingly desirable sensory objects, which causes the defilements to arise and increase. And the practice of the disciple. The first eight chapters of the Catuḥśataka are thus concerned with the preparation of those who practise the path. The last eight chapters then explain the non-substantiality of the dharmas. They deal in turn with the negation of permanent entities, self, time, dogmatic opinions, sense-faculties and their objects, the positing of doctrinal extremes with special reference to identity and difference, and the positing of conditioned things as real. Finally chapter xvi, entitled 'An exposition of the cultivation of ascertainment for master and disciple', is devoted to a consideration of logical and epistemological problems in the doctrine of sunyata. In particular, it is pointed out that he who does not maintain a thesis based on the positions of existence, non-existence, and both cannot be attacked in logic by an opponent.There also exists a complete commentary to this text by Chandrakirti which is only extant in Tibetan.
Xuanzang also translated Dharmapāla’s commentary to verses 201–400 of the Catuḥśataka, published as Dasheng Guang bailun shi lun.
Other attributed texts
Two other texts which are attributed to Āryadeva in the Chinese tradition are the following:- Śataśāstra, which only survives in Kumarajiva's Chinese translation. However, according to Ruegg, the attribution of this work to Aryadeva is uncertain. This text also comes with a commentary by an author known as Vasu. This text is closely connected to the Catuḥśataka.
- Akṣaraśataka and its Vritti is sometimes attributed to Nagarjuna in the Tibetan tradition, but the Chinese tradition attributes this to Āryadeva.
Possible wrong attributions
Vincent Eltschinger also notes three other texts in the Chinese canon which are attributed to Āryadeva, but these attributions are dubious according to Eltschinger:
- *Mahāpuruṣaśāstra, Dazhangfu lun
- Tipo pusa po Lengqie jing zhong waidao xiaosheng sizong lun
- Tipo pusa shi Lengqie jing zhong waidao xiaosheng niepan lun
According to Ruegg "the bsTan'gyur also contains two very short works attributed to Aryadeva, the *Skhalitapramathanayuktihetusiddhi and the *Madhyamakabhramaghata".
Tillemans writes that while Tibetans attribute the Destruction of Errors about Madhyamaka, "this text copiously borrows from the Verses on the Heart of Madhyamaka and Torch of Dialectics of Bhāviveka, a celebrated Mādhyamika who lived in the sixth century " and thus cannot be Aryadeva's.
The Tantric Āryadeva
Several important works of esoteric Buddhism are attributed to Āryadeva. Contemporary research suggests that these works are datable to a significantly later period in Buddhist history and they are seen as being part of a Vajrayana Madhyamaka tradition which included a later tantric author also named Āryadeva. Tillemans also notes that the Compendium on the Essence of Knowledge "gives the fourfold presentation of Buddhist doctrine typical of the doxographical literature, a genre which considerably post-dates the third century".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.