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Āryadeva (Tib. ’Phags pa lha, Chn. Tipo pusa [提婆菩薩 = Deva Bodhisattva], Tian [天 = Deva]; for other names and nicknames, see below) was a direct disciple of Nāgārjuna, regarded as the founder of the Madhyamaka school. Whereas his Catuḥśataka strongly influenced the development of Madhyamaka in India and Tibet , the *Śataka, together with Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā and the Dvādaśamukhaśāstra (all of them translated by Kumārajīva [鳩 摩羅什 ]) in the 4th century, provided the foundation for what would later become the “Three Treatises” (Sanlun [三論]) trad…

Candrakīrti (Tib. Zla ba grags pa) is one of the most outstanding intellectual personalities of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism and Madhyamaka. Besides composing one of the most important post-Nāgārjuna Mādhyamika treatises, the  Madhyamakāvatāra, Candrakīrti commented on most of Nāgārjuna’s and Āryadeva’s philosophical works. Radical in his critique of Yogācāra idealism and the nascent Buddhist epistemological “school”, Candrakīrti was an uncompromising opponent of Bhāviveka’s use of independent reasoning at the surface level of w…