The ''Śataśāstra'' is the reconstructed

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...

title of a Buddhist treatise in the Mādhyamaka tradition known only in its Chinese translation under the title ''Bai lun'' (). Both names translate to ''the Hundred Verse Treatise'', although the word "verse" is implied and not actually present in either Sanskrit or Chinese. It is attributed to

Āryadeva Āryadeva (fl. 3rd century CE) (; , Chinese: 提婆菩薩 ''Tipo pusa'' meaning Deva Bodhisattva), was a Mahayana Buddhist monk, a disciple of Nagarjuna and a Madhyamaka philosopher.Silk, Jonathan A. (ed.) (2019). ''Brill’s Encyclopedia of ...

, a student of

Nāgārjuna Nāgārjuna (Sanskrit: नागार्जुन, ''Nāgārjuna''; ) was an Indian monk and Mahāyāna Buddhist philosopher of the Madhyamaka (Centrism, Middle Way) school. He is widely considered one of the most important Buddhist philosoph ...

. The text was translated into Chinese by

Kumārajīva Kumārajīva (Sanskrit: कुमारजीव; , 344–413 CE) was a bhikkhu, Buddhist monk, scholar, missionary and translator from Kucha (present-day Aksu City, Aksu Prefecture, Xinjiang, China). Kumārajīva is seen as one of the great ...

in 404 CE and came to be counted as one of the three foundational texts of the Three Treatise School. In the Chinese tradition, another text by Āryadeva called the '' Catuḥśataka''—which was not translated into Chinese for another two and a half centuries, but is extant today in Sanskrit and Tibetan—was understood to be an expanded version of the ''Bai lun''. Today, however, scholars interpret the ''Bai lun'' to be a summary of the ''Catuḥśataka''. Nonetheless, the sequence in which the topics are discussed differs, as do the specifics, and also the ''Bai lun'' has some content not seen in the ''Catuḥśataka'' at all. This has led to an alternative hypothesis that it may simply represent Kumārajīva's understanding of the ''Catuḥśataka''.

References

Ancient Indian literature Mahayana texts Madhyamaka 5th century in China {{Buddhist-text-stub