Person · translator monk · China

Kumārajīva

Date

344–413

Function

Religious institution & practice

Confidence

Not assessed

Worth knowing

His translations — the Lotus Sutra, the Diamond Sutra, the Vimalakirti, Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka — are the versions East Asia actually reads, chosen over later and more literal ones for their Chinese. He is said to have predicted that his tongue would not burn on the pyre, and the tradition is that it did not.

Connections (2)

• Teaching lineageChang’an / Xi’an, China

  Kumarajiva was born at Kucha to an Indian father of a Kashmiri brahmin family, trained in Kashmir, held for sixteen years by a Chinese general who understood his value, and finally installed at Chang'an in 401 at the head of a state translation bureau with hundreds of assistants. The Lotus, Diamond and Vimalakirti sutras and Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka in his versions are what East Asia actually reads — chosen over later and more literal translations for the quality of their Chinese.

• BirthplaceKucha & the Kizil caves

  Kumarajiva was born at Kucha about 344 to an Indian father of a Kashmiri brahmin family and a Kuchean princess, and was taken to Kashmir at nine to study. The Kizil caves above the Muzat river, painted in an Indo-Iranian style with lapis from Badakhshan, are the art of the kingdom he came from — and the earliest major Buddhist cave complex in what is now China.

Sources

Wikipedia, “Kumārajīva”. Kumārajīva’s translations in the Taishō canon; Huijiao, Gaoseng zhuan (Biographies of Eminent Monks).

• Wikipedia — Kumārajīva