Saṅghapāla
Saṅghapāla (僧伽婆羅, 460–524), also called Saṅghavarman, was a Tripiṭaka master from Funan (扶南), a pre-Angkor Indianized kingdom (present-day Cambodia) located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia.
An intelligent child, he renounced family life at fifteen and studied the Abhidharma, the collection of treatises on the Dharma. After he became a fully ordained monk, he delved into the Vinaya.
He went to China by sea during the Southern Qi Dynasty (南齊, 479–502) and stayed in the Zhengguan Temple (正觀寺) in the capital city, Jiankang (建康), present-day Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, where he studied vaipulya sūtras and mastered several languages.
Then the Southern Qi Dynasty was replaced by the Southern Liang Dynasty (南梁, 502–57). In 503, the second year of the Tianjian (天監) years, Mandra (曼陀羅仙, 5th–6th centuries), also a Tripiṭaka master from Funan, arrived in Jiankang.
In 505, with the support of Emperor Wu (梁武帝), Saṅghapāla and Manda began to translate Sanskrit texts into Chinese. In 520, several learned Chinese monks participated in their work and recorded their translations.
Saṅghapāla translated many texts. Some he did jointly with Manda but some he did by himself, such as the Sūtra of the Ten Dharmas of the Mahāyāna (T11n0314),
the Sūtra of Entering the States of All Buddhas Adorned with Wisdom (T12n0358), the Sūtra of Mañjuśrī’s Questions (T14n0468) in 2 fascicles, the Mahāyāna Sūtra of the Jewel Cloud (T16n0659) in 7 fascicles, and more. In 524, Saṅghapāla died at the age of sixty-five.
