那伽閼剌樹那

(那伽閼剌樹那, 那伽阏剌树那)

(or [lang id =1028]那伽閼曷樹那) Nāgārjuna, [lang id =1028]龍樹 the dragon-(sa) arjuna tree, or (sa) nāgakrośana, intp. probably wrongly as [lang id =1028]龍猛 dragon-fierce. One of the 'four suns' and reputed founder of Mahāyāna (but see [lang id =1028]阿 for Aśvaghoṣa), native of South India, the fourteenth patriarch; he is said to have cut off his head as an offering. 'He probably flourished in the latter half of the second century A. D.' Eliot, v. [lang id =1028]龍樹. He founded the Mādhyamika or [lang id =1028]中 School, generally considered as advocating doctrines of negation or nihilism, but his aim seems to have been a reality beyond the limitations of positive and negative, the identification of contraries in a higher synthesis, e. g. birth and death, existence and non-existence, eternal and non-eternal; v. [lang id =1028]中論.