Madhyamakālaṃkāra

The Madhyamakālaṃkāra is an 8th-century Buddhist text, believed to have been originally composed in Sanskrit by Śāntarakṣita (725–788), which is extant in Tibetan. The Tibetan text was translated from the Sanskrit by Surendrabodhi () and Jñānasūtra. In the short-verse text of the Madhyamakālaṃkāra, Śāntarakṣita details his philosophical synthesis of the conventional truth of Yogacara with the ultimate truth of the Madhyamaka, assisted by Buddhist logic with a lengthy discussion of the "neither one nor many" argument. Though somewhat lyrical, it is a summary and a key to his encyclopedic Tattvasamgraha. It has the fullness of the Sutrayana and Mahayana traditions' development in its place of origin before the Buddhist tradition of India was transposed by the cultures of the Far East (such as China and Japan) and elsewhere (such as Ceylon and Kashmir), where Buddhism was already flourishing in culturally specific forms. The text refutes challenges of Buddhist systems and tenets from within the tradition, and is a pedagogical discourse on the development of the yana; the philosophical challenges posed by the non-Buddhist religions and non-Dharmic traditions of India, and crystallizes a dialectical sophistication of Indian logic and the clarity of debate expected of a Khenpo of Nalanda Vihara. The text was seminal in the tradition of Samye which became known as a Nyingma institution in contrast to the emergent Sarma traditions of Atisha's (980-1054) translation phase. It documents the Nyingma view of the Two Truths, making it a canonical work. Although the text was marginalized due to the rise of the Prasaṅgika subschool of Mādhyamaka, it was revived by Ju Mipham's (1846–1912) 1876 Commentary. The Madhyamakālaṃkāra and its tradition survived the destruction of Nalanda Vihara and the ascendancy of the Muslim empire in India during the 13th-century eclipse of Buddhism through its transplantation to the Tibetan Plateau by Śāntarakṣita at the request of Trisong Detsen. It was taught at the Samye Monastery, which was safeguarded by the Himalayas.