Vasubandhu
VASUBANDHU (fifth or fourth century CE) was an eminent Indian Buddhist teacher. Said to be a younger brother of the great Māhāyana teacher Asaṅga, Vasubandhu was first ordained in the Hīnayāna Sarvāstivada school but later converted to the Mahāyāna. Like his brother Asaṅga, Vasubandhu became a great exponent of the Yogācāra-Vijñānavāda teachings. He is believed to be the author of the Abhidharmakośa and many Māhāyana treatises.
Various problems continue to vex historians concerning the biography of Vasubandhu. The Bosoupandou fashi zhuan (Biography of Master Vasubandhu, T.D. no. 2049), translated—or rather, compiled—by Paramārtha (499–569), one of the main exponents of Yogācāra doctrine in China, is preserved in the Chinese Tripiṭaka and is the only complete biography. Apart from this, fragmentary information is found in various Chinese sources, the most important of which are the writings of the great Chinese translator Xuanzang (600–664). Various histories of Buddhism written by Tibetan historians also give accounts of Vasubandhu's life. But Chinese and Tibetan sources alike disagree with the Biography of Master Vasubandhu (hereafter Biography) in many places. Moreover, two or three persons in Buddhist history bear the name Vasubandhu: According to some texts, a Vasubandhu is the twenty-first patriarch in the transmission of the Buddha's Dharma; elsewhere, Puguang (one of the direct disciples of Xuanzang) refers to an "ancient Vasubandhu" who belonged to the Sarvastivada school; and both Puguang and Yaśomitra, a commentator on the Abhidharmakośa, refer to a third, known as Sthavira-Vasubandhu.
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