Ancient · c. 150–250
Who did Nagarjuna influence?
Students and legacy
Founder of Madhyamaka: emptiness is not nothing, it is dependent arising.
Nagarjuna influenced Adi Shankara and Dōgen. That is 2 lines of the 448 documented lines of influence between the 279 thinkers on this map.
Read on Wikipedia Portrait: Unknown | Recovered from Himalayan Art Resources, Public domain See the whole map
Who was Nagarjuna?
Nagarjuna was an Indian monk, philosopher and teacher of Mahayana Buddhism from south India and the founder of the Madhyamaka, or Middle Way, school. He is widely considered the most important Buddhist philosopher after the Buddha himself; Tibetan Buddhism calls him the "second Buddha".
His writings on emptiness (śūnyatā) shaped Indian philosophy for a thousand years and remain a core doctrinal source for East Asian and Indo-Tibetan Buddhism. His Root Verses on the Middle Way is the central text of Madhyamaka and has drawn commentaries in Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan, Korean and Japanese.
Summarized from the lead of the Wikipedia article.
Who did Nagarjuna influence?
2 thinkers on this map draw directly on Nagarjuna.
- Adi Shankara 788–820
- Dōgen 1200–1253
Two steps away from Nagarjuna
The second generation
- Through Adi Shankara: Ramanuja
Contemporaries of Nagarjuna
Thinkers on this map born within 25 years of Nagarjuna, with no direct line between them.
- Clement of Alexandria c. 150–215
- Tertullian c. 155–220
- Sextus Empiricus c. 160–210
- Irenaeus c. 130–202
Nagarjuna by the numbers
- Direct influences
- 0
- Direct followers
- 2
- Thinkers upstream
- 0
- Thinkers downstream
- 3
- Wikipedia languages
- 107 — #10 of 54 among ancient philosophers
- Card rarity
- Legendary
Schools and lineages
- Non-Western: Confucius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Mencius, Xunzi, Nagarjuna, Adi Shankara, Ramanuja, Dōgen, Kitarō Nishida, Muhammad Iqbal
Questions about Nagarjuna
- Who influenced Nagarjuna?
- No earlier thinker on this map is recorded as a direct influence on Nagarjuna.
- Who did Nagarjuna influence?
- Adi Shankara and Dōgen.
- When did Nagarjuna live?
- c. 150–250. The map files Nagarjuna under the ancient world.
- How rare is the Nagarjuna card?
- Wikipedia carries an article on Nagarjuna in 107 languages, which makes it a Legendary card. Legendary starts at 100 languages, Epic at 50 and Rare at 25.
More ancient philosophers
- Confucius 551–479 BC
- Aristotle 384–322 BC
- Plato c. 428–348 BC
- Socrates c. 470–399 BC
- Pythagoras c. 570–495 BC
- Laozi c. 6th c. BC
- Cicero 106–43 BC
- Thales of Miletus c. 624–546 BC