Kumārajīva　鳩摩羅什 (344-413) Well-known Buddhist scholar and translator, born of an Indian father and a mother who was a sister of the king of Kuccha in Central Asia. After he was invited to Ch’ang-an in 401 as a state-appointed Dharma-master, he was engaged in the translation of Buddhist texts. According to the K’ai-yüan Era Catalog of Scriptures, Kumārajīva translated the Amida Sutra in 402. His translations, including the Amida Sutra, were widely accepted in China, Korea, and Japan. Many texts he translated were Mahayana sutras and discourses closely related to the Mādhyamika school founded by Nāgārjuna in the 2nd to 3rd centuries. Consequently, his translations brought systematization to Buddhist thought in China and played a significant role in giving a new direction to Chinese Buddhism. His achievement as such was surely possible especially because he was not simply a prominent translator of Buddhist scrptures, but was an eminent Mādhyamika thinker. The San-lun school was established based on his translation of the three Mādhyamika discourses by Nāgārjuna and Āryadeva. It is said that he had three thousand disciples, of whom the following four are especially famous: Tao-sheng, Seng-chao, Tao-jung, and Seng-jui.