Dharmakṣema

Who was Dharmakṣema?

Dharmakṣema was a Buddhist monk, originally from Central India, who went to China after studying and teaching in Kashmir and Kucha. He had been residing in Dunhuang for several years when that city was captured in 420 by Juqu Mengxun, the king of Northern Liang. Under the patronage of Mengxun, Dharmakṣema took up residence in Guzang, the Northern Liang capital in 421. As well as being a valued political adviser to Mengxun, he went on to become one of the most prolific translators of Buddhist literature into Chinese. The colophons to translated texts attributed to Dharmakṣema, indicate that he was one of the few Indian scholar-monks active in China who was sufficiently proficient in spoken Chinese to make the preliminary oral translations of Buddhist texts himself without an interpreter, although the further stages in the production of the translations were done by his team of Chinese assistants. He was assassinated on the orders of his erstwhile patron Mengxun, for quasi-political reasons, on another journey to the West in 433.