Kumarajīva was a Kuchean Buddhist monk, scholar, and translator. He first studied teachings of the Sarvastivada schools, later studied under Buddhasvamin, and finally became a Mahayana adherent, studying the Madhyamaka doctrine of Nagarjuna. He is mostly remembered for the prolific translation of Buddhist texts written in Sanskrit to Chinese he carried out during his later life.
Background
Kumarajiva was born c. 344 to a father said to be descended from a hereditary Chief Minister’s family in India, hence the name Kumara or ‘prince’. His father abandoned the palace to become a Buddhist monk and travel to Central Asia. The king of Qiuci (present-day Kuche in Xinjiang) invited him to serve as the ‘national preceptor’. The king’s younger sister fell in love with him, so he abandoned monkhood and married her; Kumarajiva was their first-born son. Both his parents remained devout Buddhists, his mother eventually divorcing her husband to become a nun and taking Kumarajiva to Kashmir to study Buddhism for some thirteen years.
Education
When his mother Jīva joined the Tsio-li nunnery, Kumārajīva was just seven but is said to have already committed many texts and sutras to memory. He proceeded to learn Abhidharma, and after two years, at the age of nine, he was taken to Kashmir by his mother to be better educated under Bandhudatta. There he studied Dīrgha Āgama, Madhyama Āgama and the Kṣudraka, before returning with his mother three years later. On his return via Tokharestan and Kashgar, an arhat predicted that he had a bright future and would introduce many people to Buddhism. Kumārajīva stayed in Kashgar for a year, ordaining the two princely sons of Tsan-kiun (himself the son of the king of Yarkand) and studying the Abhidharma Piṭaka of the Sarvastivada under the Kashmirian Buddhayaśa, as well as the four Vedas, five sciences, Brahmanical sacred texts, astronomy. He studied mainly Āgama and Sarvastivada doctrines at this time.
Kumārajīva left Kashgar with Jīva at age 12, and traveled to Turpan, the north-eastern limit of the kingdom of Kucha, which was home to more than 10,000 monks. Somewhere around this time, he encountered the master Suryasoma, who instructed him in early Mahayana texts. Kumārajīva soon converted, and began studying Madhyamaka texts such as the works of Nagarjuna.
Career
Kumarajiva returned to Qiuci at the age of about nineteen, and his fame as a Buddhist teacher soon spread. When Emperor Fu Jian of the proto-Tibetan Former Qin dynasty in northern China despatched an expeditionary force to Central Asia in 382, one of the ostensible objectives was to bring Kumarajiva to court, which was accomplished. When the Former Qin dynasty collapsed, Kumarajiva was retained by the ruler of the proto-Tibetan Later Liang when he studied Chinese. In 401, the Later Liang was defeated by another proto- Tibetan power, the Later Qin, whose Buddhist ruler welcomed Kumarajiva to the capital, Chang’an.