Candragomin

From Khyentse Lineage - A Tsadra Foundation Project

བཙུན་པ་ཟླ་བ་
Candragomin

Candragomin. (T. Btsun pa zla ba). Fifth-century CE Indian lay poet and grammarian, who made substantial contributions

to Sanskrit grammar, founding what was known as the Cāndra school. A junior contemporary of the great Kālidāsa, Candragomin was one of the most accomplished poets in the history of Indian Buddhism. His play Lokānanda, which tells the story of the bodhisattva king Maṇicūḍa, is the oldest extant Buddhist play and was widely performed in the centuries after its composition. He was a devotee of Tārā and composed several works in her praise. Tibetan works describe him as a proponent of Vijñānavãda who engaged in debate with Candrakīrti, but there is little philosophical content in his works that can be confidently ascribed to him. Among those works are the "Letter to a Disciple" (Śiṣyalekha), the "Confessional Praise" (Deśanāstava), and perhaps the "Twenty Verses on the Bodhisattva Precepts" (Bodhisattvasaṃvaraviṃśaka). (Source: "Candragomin." In The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, 165. Princeton University Press, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46n41q.27.)



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