Nāgārjuna

Nāgārjuna was an Indian Buddhist monk and philosopher who lived at some point between about 150 and 250 CE, probably mainly in southern India. Beyond that, scholars say very little can be stated with certainty. Legendary accounts abound, and works by later authors of the same name have been attributed to him.

The Tibetan, Chinese and later traditions fill the gap with stories. Traditional accounts say he was born a Brahmin, entered the Buddhist order after a prediction that he would die young, and studied at Nālandā. Another tradition says he was invited to the realm of the nāgas, serpent beings, where he recovered the Perfection of Wisdom (Prajñāpāramitā) scriptures and returned them to the human world. His name is linked to that story. These are legends told about him, not documented history.

SEP calls his most important work the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (“Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way”), about 450 stanzas that set out the whole of his thinking. Its central claim is that things lack svabhāva, an inherent, independent nature. Because phenomena arise in dependence on causes, parts and concepts, they are “empty” (śūnyatā). Nāgārjuna uses this to take apart ideas about causation, change, the self and knowledge itself. Other works generally ascribed to him include the Vigrahavyāvartanī (“Dispeller of Disputes”), the Yuktiṣaṣṭikā (“Sixty Stanzas on Reasoning”) and the Śūnyatāsaptati (“Seventy Stanzas on Emptiness”). Whether he wrote the Ratnāvalī (“Precious Garland”) and a letter to a friend, the Suhṛllekha, is more contested.

He founded the Madhyamaka school of philosophy. Many later authors wrote commentaries on his work, and in Tibet one reading of it, Prāsaṅgika-Madhyamaka, became the standard philosophical view of the Tibetan schools. Tibetan traditions know him as the founder of the “Profound View”.

Mark Siderits and Shōryū Katsura’s English translation of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā was published by Wisdom in 2013. The Stanford and Internet encyclopedia entries listed below set out what is and is not known about him.