Dharmapāla A Brahmin

Brahmin

Brahmin Brahman, Brahma and Brahmin.Brahman, Brahmin and Brahma have different meanings. Brahman refers to the Supreme Self...

 Buddhist

Buddhism

Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...

 scholar, he was one of the main teachers of the Yogacara

Yogacara

Yogācāra is an influential school of Buddhist philosophy and psychology emphasizing phenomenology and ontology through the interior lens of meditative and yogic practices. It developed within Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism in about the 4th century CE...

 school in India. He was a contemporary of Bhavaviveka

Bhavaviveka

Bhavyaviveka was the founder of the Svatantrika tradition of the Mādhyamaka school of Buddhism. Ames , holds that Bhavyaviveka is one of the first Buddhist logicians to employ the 'formal syllogism' of Indian Logic in expounding the Mādhyamaka which he employed to considerable effect...

 (清辯, c. 490-570 CE.), with whom he debated.

Xuanzang

Xuanzang

Xuanzang was a famous Chinese Buddhist monk, scholar, traveler, and translator who described the interaction between China and India in the early Tang period...

, the famous Chinese pilgrim, tells that Dharmapāla was born in Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu is one of the 28 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by the union territory of Pondicherry, and the states of Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh...

. He was a son of a high official, and betrothed to a daughter of the king, but escaped on the eve of the wedding feast, entered the order, studied all views, from Hinayana

Hinayana

Hīnayāna is a Sanskrit and Pāli term literally meaning: the "Inferior Vehicle", "Deficient Vehicle", the "Abandoned Vehicle", or the "Defective Vehicle". The term appeared around the 1st or 2nd century....

 as well as Mahayana

Mahayana

Mahāyāna is one of the two main existing branches of Buddhism and a term for classification of Buddhist philosophies and practice...

, and attained to reverence and distinction. He studied in Nalanda

Nalanda

Nālandā is the name of an ancient center of higher learning in Bihar, India.The site of Nalanda is located in the Indian state of Bihar, about 55 miles south east of Patna, and was a Buddhist center of learning from the fifth or sixth century CE to 1197 CE. It has been called "one of the...

 as a student of Dignāga

Dignaga

Dignāga was an Indian scholar and one of the Buddhist founders of Indian logic.He was born into a Brahmin family in Simhavakta near Kanchi Kanchipuram), and very little is known of his early years, except that he took as his spiritual preceptor Nagadatta of the Vatsiputriya school, before being...

. Later he succeeded him as abbot of the University. He spent his last years near the Bodhi tree, where he died.

Dharmapāla developed the theory that the external things do not exist and consciousness only exists. He explains the manifestation of the phenomenal world as arising from the eight consciousness.

Through the teachings of his disciple Silabhadra to Xuanzang, Dharmapāla’s tenets expanded greatly in China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

. His works survive in Chinese translations.