Ratnamati

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रत्नमति
Ratnamati(5th Century - 6th Century)
勒那摩提

In Sanskrit, "Bejeweled Intelligence," name of an Indian scholar and Chinese translator who lived during the fifth and sixth centuries CE. He was especially renowned for his prodigious memory of a great many sūtra verses. In 508 CE, Ratnamati traveled from India to the Northern Wei capital of Luoyang, where he began to work on a translation of Vasubandhu's "Treatise on the Ten Stages" (S. Daṡabhūmivyākhyāna; C. Shidijing lun) with Bodhiruci and Buddhaśānta (d.u.). However, disagreements between the collaborators over the nature of the ālayavijñāna (viz., whether it was pure, impure, or both) led them to produce different translations. Those who studied Bodhiruci's rendering came to be known as the Northern Di lun zong, while the followers of Ratnamati's version were known as the Southern Di lun zong. The Southern Di lun school was represented by Ratnamati's foremost pupil, Huiguang (468–537), who advocated that the ālayavijñāna was an ultimate truth (paramārthasatya) and coextensive with the buddha-nature (foxing), which thus was in fact innate. Ratnamati subsequently went on to collaborate with other scholars on the translation of other works, including the Ratnagotravibhāga, and the Saddharmapuṇdarīkopadeśa attributed to Vasubandhu. Ratnamati is also the name of a bodhisattva who appears in various Mahāyāna sūtras. (Source: "Ratnamati." In The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, 703. Princeton University Press, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46n41q.27.)

Library Items

Text
Maitreya, Asaṅga: Ratnagotravibhāga Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra
The Ratnagotravibhāga, commonly known as the Uttaratantra, or Gyu Lama in Tibetan, is one of the main Indian scriptural sources for buddha-nature theory. It was likely composed during the fifth century, by whom we do not know. Comprised of verses interspersed with prose commentary, it systematizes the buddha-nature teachings that were circulating in multiple sūtras such as the Tathāgatagarbhasūtra, the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra, and the Śrīmaladevisūtra. The Tibetan tradition attributes the verses to the Bodhisattva Maitreya and the commentary to Asaṅga, and treats the two as separate texts, although this division is not attested to in surviving Indian versions. The Chinese tradition attributes the text to *Sāramati (娑囉末底), but the translation itself does not include the name of the author, and the matter remains unsettled. It was translated into Chinese in the early sixth century by Ratnamati and first translated into Tibetan by Atiśa, although this text is not known to survive. Ngok Loden Sherab translated it a second time based on teachings from the Kashmiri Pandita Sajjana, and theirs remains the standard translation. It has been translated into English several times, and recently into French. See the Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā, read more about the Ratnagotravibhāga, or take a look at the most complete English translation in When the Clouds Part by Karl Brunnholzl.

Other names

  • རིན་ཆེན་བློ་གྲོས · other names (Tibetan)
  • Rin chen blo gros · other names (Wylie)
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