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Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra
The ''Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra'' (Sanskrit: अष्टसाहस्रिका प्रज्ञापारमिता सूत्र; English: ''The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand ines') is a Mahāyāna Buddhist sūtra in the category of Prajñāpāramitā sūtra literature. The sūtra's manuscript witnesses date to at least ca. 50 CE, making it among the oldest Buddhist manuscripts in existence.{https://blogs.loc.gov/international-collections/2019/07/2000-year-old-buddhist-scroll-from-ancient-gandhara-digitized-by-library-of-congress/ Library of Congress blog post] The sūtra forms the basis for the expansion and development of the Prajñāpāramitā sūtra literature. In terms of its influence in the development of Buddhist philosophy, Buddhist philosophical thought, P.L. Vaidya writes that "all Buddhist writers from Nāgārjuna, Āryadeva, Maitreyanātha, Asaṅga, Vasubandhu, Dignāga, down to Haribhadra concentrated their energies i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1511 CE, Astasahasrika Prajna Paramita Buddhist Text, Buddhist Deities, Scenes From The Life Of The Buddha, Sanskrit, Nepalaksara Script
Year 1511 ( MDXI) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events January–June * March 26 - The 1511 Idrija earthquake occurs, with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (''Extreme''). The epicenter is around the town of Idrija in present-day Slovenia, although some place it some 15-20 kilometers to the west, between Gemona and Pulfero in Friulian Slovenia. The earthquake affects a large territory between Carinthia, Friuli, present-day Slovenia and Croatia. * April 9 **St John's College, Cambridge, England, founded by Lady Margaret Beaufort, receives its charter. **The Şahkulu Rebellion breaks out in Anatolia. July–December * July – Henry VIII of England's flagship, the ''Mary Rose'', is launched at Portsmouth. * August 15 – Capture of Malacca: Afonso de Albuquerque of Portugal conquers Malacca, the capital of the Sultanate of Malacca, giving Portugal control over the Strait of Malacca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bodhisattva
In Buddhism, a bodhisattva ( ; sa, 𑀩𑁄𑀥𑀺𑀲𑀢𑁆𑀢𑁆𑀯 (Brahmī), translit=bodhisattva, label=Sanskrit) or bodhisatva is a person who is on the path towards bodhi ('awakening') or Buddhahood. In the Early Buddhist schools as well as modern Theravada Buddhism, a bodhisattva ( Pali: ''bodhisatta'') refers to someone who has made a resolution to become a Buddha and has also received a confirmation or prediction from a living Buddha that this will be so. In Mahayana Buddhism, a bodhisattva refers to anyone who has generated '' bodhicitta'', a spontaneous wish and compassionate mind to attain Buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings. Mahayana bodhisattvas are spiritually heroic persons that work to attain awakening and are driven by a great compassion (''mahakaruṇā''). These beings are exemplified by important spiritual qualities such as the "four divine abodes" ('' brahmaviharas'') of loving-kindness (''metta''), compassion ('' karuṇā''), e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Xuanzang
Xuanzang (, ; 602–664), born Chen Hui / Chen Yi (), also known as Hiuen Tsang, was a 7th-century Chinese Buddhist monk, scholar, traveler, and translator. He is known for the epoch-making contributions to Chinese Buddhism, the travelogue of his journey to India in 629–645 CE, his efforts to bring over 657 Indian texts to China, and his translations of some of these texts.Li Rongxi (1996), ''The Great Tang Dynasty Record of the Western Regions'', Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai and Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, Berkeley, , pp. xiii-xiv Xuanzang was born on 6 April 602 in Chenliu, what is now Kaifeng municipality in Henan province. As a boy, he took to reading religious books, and studying the ideas therein with his father. Like his elder brother, he became a student of Buddhist studies at Jingtu monastery. Xuanzang was ordained as a '' śrāmaṇera'' (novice monk) at the age of thirteen. Due to the political and social unrest caused by the fall of the Sui dyna ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kumārajīva
Kumārajīva (Sanskrit: कुमारजीव; , 344–413 CE) was a Buddhist monk, scholar, missionary and translator from the Kingdom of Kucha (present-day Aksu Prefecture, Xinjiang, China). Kumārajīva is seen as one of the greatest translators of Chinese Buddhism. According to Lu Cheng, Kumarajiva's translations are "unparalleled either in terms of translation technique or degree of fidelity". Kumārajīva first studied teachings of the Sarvastivadin schools, later studied under Buddhasvāmin, and finally became an adherent of Mahayana Buddhism, studying the Mādhyamaka doctrine of Nāgārjuna. After mastering the Chinese language, Kumārajīva settled as a translator and scholar in Chang'an (c. 401 CE). He was the head of a team of translators which included his amanuensis Sengrui. This team was responsible for the translation of many Sanskrit Buddhist texts into Chinese. Kumārajīva also introduced the Madhyamaka school of Buddhist philosophy into Chin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dharmarakṣa
(, J. Jiku Hōgo; K. Ch’uk Pǒphom c. 233-310) was one of the most important early translators of Mahayana sutras into Chinese. Several of his translations had profound effects on East Asian Buddhism. He is described in scriptural catalogues as Yuezhi in origin. Life His family lived at Dunhuang, where he was born around 233 CE. At the age of eight, he became a novice and took the Indian monk named Zhu Gaozuo () as his teacher. As a young boy, Dhamaraksa was said to be extremely intelligent, and journeyed with his teacher to many countries in the Western Regions, where he learned Central Asian languages and scripts. He then traveled back to China with a quantity of Buddhist texts and translated them with the aid of numerous assistants and associates, both Chinese and foreign, from Parthians to Khotanese. One of his more prominent assistants was a Chinese upāsaka, Nie Chengyuan (), who served as a scribe and editor. Dharmaraksa first began his translation career in Chang' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kang Senghui
Kang Senghui (traditional: 康 僧 會; simplified: 康 僧 会; pinyin: Kāng Sēnghuì; Wade–Giles: K'ang Seng-hui; Vietnamese: Khương Tăng Hội; died 280) was a Buddhist monk and translator during the Three Kingdoms period of ancient China. He was born in Jiaozhi (modern-day northern Vietnam). He was the son of a Sogdian merchant, hence the last name of Kang, meaning "one whose forefathers had been people from Kangju", or Sogdia. Kang received a Chinese literary education and was "widely read in the six (Confucian) classics." He also read Sanskrit and was known for his knowledge of the Tripiṭaka (the Buddhist canon). He joined the ''saïgha'' (the Buddhist monastic order) as a teenager, following the death of his parents. Kang contributed more to the diffusion of Buddhist sutras as a preacher than to their translation into the Chinese language as there are only two collections of '' avadānas'' in the canon which are attributed to him. According to legend, the first B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zhi Qian
Zhi Qian (; fl. 222–252 CE) was a Chinese Buddhist layman of Yuezhi ancestry who translated a wide range of Indian Buddhist scriptures into Chinese. He was the grandson (or according to another source, the son) of an immigrant from the country of the Great Yuezhi, an area that overlapped to at least some extent with the territory of the Kushan Empire. According to the Chinese custom of the time, he used the ethnonym "Zhi" as his surname, to indicate his foreign ancestry. Life Born in north China, at an early age Zhi Qian became a disciple of Zhi Liang, who in turn had been a disciple of the famous translator of Mahāyāna scriptures, Lokakṣema (fl. c. 168–189 CE), who was likewise of Yuezhi ancestry. Toward the end of the Han Dynasty, as chaos spread throughout the north, Zhi Qian migrated with several dozens of his countrymen to the southern Wu kingdom. Settling first at Wuchang, then in Jianye after 229 CE. According to the earliest extant biography, contained in Se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mongolian Language
Mongolian is the official language of Mongolia and both the most widely spoken and best-known member of the Mongolic language family. The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5.2 million, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia and many of the ethnic Mongol residents of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China.Estimate from Svantesson ''et al.'' (2005): 141. In Mongolia, Khalkha Mongolian is predominant, and is currently written in both Cyrillic and traditional Mongolian script. In Inner Mongolia, the language is dialectally more diverse and is written in the traditional Mongolian script. However, Mongols in both countries often use the Latin script for convenience on the Internet. In the discussion of grammar to follow, the variety of Mongolian treated is the standard written Khalkha formalized in the writing conventions and in grammar as taught in schools, but much of what is to be said is also valid for ve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Classical Tibetan
Classical Tibetan refers to the language of any text written in Tibetic after the Old Tibetan period. Though it extends from the 12th century until the modern day, it particularly refers to the language of early canonical texts translated from other languages, especially Sanskrit. The phonology implied by Classical Tibetan orthography is very similar to the phonology of Old Tibetan, but the grammar varies greatly depending on period and geographic origin of the author. Such variation is an under-researched topic. In 816, during the reign of King Sadnalegs, literary Tibetan underwent a thorough reform aimed at standardizing the language and vocabulary of the translations being made from Sanskrit, which was one of the main influences for literary standards in what is now called Classical Tibetan. Nouns Structure of the noun phrase Nominalizing suffixes — ''pa'' or ''ba'' and ''ma'' — are required by the noun or adjective that is to be singled out; * ''po'' or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Language
Chinese (, especially when referring to written Chinese) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China. About 1.3 billion people (or approximately 16% of the world's population) speak a variety of Chinese as their first language. Chinese languages form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages family. The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be variants of a single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered separate languages in a family. Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese, of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin (with about 800 million speakers, or 66%), followed by Min (75 million, e.g. Southern Min), Wu (74 million, e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lokaksema (Buddhist Monk)
Lokakṣema (लोकक्षेम, ) (flourished 147-189) was a Kushan Buddhist monk from Gandhara who traveled to China during the Han dynasty and translated Buddhist texts into Chinese, and, as such, is an important figure in Chinese Buddhism. Biography Details of Lokakṣema's life come to us via a short biography by Sengyou (僧祐; pinyin: Sēngyòu; 445–518 CE) and his text “Collected Records concerning the Tripitaka” (出三藏記集 Chu sanzang jìjí, T2145). The name 婁迦讖 is usually rendered in Sanskrit as Lokakṣema, though this is disputed by some scholars, and variants such as Lokakṣama have been proposed. In particular the character 讖 can be read as ''chen'' or ''chan''. Sengyou refers to him as ''Zhīchèn'' (). The ''Zhī'' () prefix added to his Chinese name suggests that Lokaksema was of Yuezhi () ethnicity. He is traditionally said to have been a Kushan, though the Chinese term ''Yuezhi'' covered a broad area of what is now Iran, Afgha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shloka
Shloka or śloka ( sa, श्लोक , from the root , Macdonell, Arthur A., ''A Sanskrit Grammar for Students'', Appendix II, p. 232 (Oxford University Press, 3rd edition, 1927). in a broader sense, according to Monier-Williams's dictionary, is "any verse or stanza; a proverb, saying"; but in particular it refers to the 32-line verse, derived from the Vedic '' anuṣṭubh'' metre, used in the '' Bhagavad Gita'' and many other works of classical Sanskrit literature. In its usual form it consists of four ''pādas'' or quarter-verses, of 8 syllables each, or (according to an alternative analysis) of two half-verses of 16 syllables each. The metre is similar to the Vedic '' anuṣṭubh'' metre, but with stricter rules. The ''śloka'' is the basis for Indian epic poetry, and may be considered the Indian verse form ''par excellence'', occurring as it does far more frequently than any other metre in classical Sanskrit poetry. The ''śloka'' is the verse-form generally used in the ''M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
