Abstract

The article details the biography and teachings of Śāntarakṣita, a famous Buddhist scholar and enlightener, a leading figure in the spread of Buddhism in Tibet and his closest student Kamalaśīla. Śāntarakṣita is the author of several treatises, including Compendium of Entities - Tattvasaṃgraha, a monumental work that can rightfully be called the Buddhist Philosophical Encyclopedia, consisting of 26 sections, in which all key philosophical schools of India, namely: Mīmāṃsa, Vedānta, Sāṃkhya, Yoga, Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika, Lokāyata, Jainism and Buddhism of other sects) are analyzed and subsequently refuted. Kamalaśīla is a direct student of Śāntarakṣita, the author of a word-to-word commentary on the teacher's Tattvasaṃgraha. The article also dwells on the history of the discovery and study of the Tattvasaṃgraha. The novelty of the study lies in a full-length encyclopedic presentation of the philosophy of Śāntarakṣita and his immediate student Kamalaśīla. A special contribution of the author to the study of the topic is the demonstration that Śāntarakṣita, as a representative of the Yogācāra-Madhyamaka school, worked in the genre of synthesis of the teachings of Yogācāra and Madhyamaka, and in the field of epistemology he continued the theories of Dignāga and Dharmakīrti.