Oh! Sorry, I was posting about the commentary (upadesa) on the Prajnaparamita, and then got confused.tiltbillings wrote:Not biography, but commentary. You wrote above:Due to source bias in western scholars, they almost always overlook the earliest sources we have on this, namely the Zhong Lun, translation of the Madhyamakakarika by Kumarajiva, in ~400, with it's commentary (centuries before Candrakirti, etc.)Paññāsikhara wrote:A Chinese biography? Yes, quite different from the Tibetan, and of course, much earlier too.tiltbillings wrote:
You mentioned above a Chinese commentary on Nagarjuna, which I believe is the same one Kaluphana mentions, which take a bit of a different take on Nagarjuna than what we find in the Tibetan sources. If you are working with that commentary, are you translating it?
Not being at home, I do not have access to Kaluphana's book were he talks about the Chinese commentary to the MMK and it certainly is not the Mahaprajnaparamita Upadesa.
Yes, this is indeed the version that Kalupahana refers to. In his Preface, p. vi, he says: "... I began to realize how Candrakirti was gradually leading me away from Nagarjuna's philosophical standpoint" ... "meeting with some scholars who were brought up in the Vedic tradition, I found them to be extremely comfortable with Nagarjuna as expressed by Candrakirti, and less impressed by the teachings of early Buddhism as recorded in the Nikayas and Agamas". ... "I found no justification whatsoever in looking at Nagarjuna through Candrakirti's eyes when there was a more faithful and closer disciple of Nagarjuna in Kumarajiva".
How many publications do we see about Nagarjuna that take this commentary as a key element are there? Very few indeed.
There is a translation by Bocking: Nagarjuna in China A Translation of the Middle Treatise
http://www.amazon.com/Nagarjuna-China-T ... 823&sr=8-1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Eesh! $139-! and only one review. Obviously shows that it is kind of rare, nobody takes this as the standard place to start looking, despite it being a quality book.