Asaṅga
? · Peshawar (Puruṣapura)
fl. c. 4th–5th c. CE; exact dates uncertain
Asaṅga was a founder-systematizer of the Yogācāra ('practice of yoga' / 'mind-only') school of Mahāyāna philosophy, active in roughly the 4th–5th century CE and traditionally born at Puruṣapura (modern Peshawar) in Gandhāra. He is credited with major works of the tradition (the Yogācārabhūmi and the Mahāyānasaṃgraha among them) and, in tradition, with receiving teachings from the future buddha Maitreya—an attribution that scholarship treats as the source of the so-called 'Maitreya texts' rather than as biography. He is a securely historical figure, though his exact dates and the relation of his life to his half-brother Vasubandhu's carry some uncertainty.
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Peshawar (Puruṣapura)
What they did here
Birthplace of Asaṅga.
About Peshawar (Puruṣapura)
Peshawar, in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of modern Pakistan, was known in antiquity as Puruṣapura, a capital of the Gandhāra region and of the Kushan empire. According to the Tibetan historian Tāranātha and other accounts, the Yogācāra masters and half-brothers Asaṅga and Vasubandhu were born there in the early centuries CE.
Works
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