Patsab Nyima Drakpa

Patsab Nyima Drakpa (T. pa tshab nyi ma grags pa པ་ཚབ་ཉི་མ་གྲགས་པ་) (1055-1145?) was a Tibetan Buddhist scholar and translator of the Sarma (New Translation) era. He was a monk at Sangpu monastery and traveled to Kashmir where he translated Buddhist Madhyamika texts.

He is best known as a translator and exegete of Madhyamaka philosophy in Tibet, associating himself with what he called the "Prasangika" school and the views of Chandrakirti. He is thus considered to be the founder of the "Prasangika" school in Tibet and may have invented the Tibetan term thal 'gyur ba (which modern scholars have back translated to prasangika).

Patsab translated:

• Mulamadhyamakakarika by Nagarjuna
• Four Hundred Verses by Aryadeva
• Madhyamakāvatāra by Chandrakirti

Patsab's commentary on Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika seems to be the first Tibetan commentary on this work.

He is also credited as the author of three commentary works that have been published in the "Selected Works of the Kadampas, volume II".

Ringu Tulku states:

The view of Prasangika Madhyamaka is the main view of all the schools of Tibetan Buddhism. It was firmly established in Tibet through the teaching of Patsap Lotsawa Nyima Dragpa, who lived in the eleventh century. Patsap went to Kashmir and studied with the two sons of Sajjana for twenty-three years. While there, he translated Wisdom, a Root Text on the Middle Way, the Entrance to the Middle Way, the Four Hundred Stanzas, Chandrakirti’s commentaries, and other Prasangika texts into Tibetan.

Patsap had four main students: Gangpa Sheu, who was learned in the words; Tsangpa Dregur, who was learned in the meaning; Maja Jangtsön, who was learned in both the words and the meaning; and Shangthang Sagpa Yeshe Jungne, who was not learned in either. They and their students opened the great way of teaching, debating, and writing based on the texts of Chandrakirti and other masters of Prasangika philosophy. It is important to recognize that all the study of Prasangika Madhyamaka in Tibet started with Patsap and his students.

Sources

• Ringu Tulku (2006), The Ri-Me Philosophy of Jamgon Kungtrul the Great, Shambhala 
• Shakya Chokden, Three Texts on Madhyamaka, trans. Komarovski Iaroslav, Dharamsala: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 2002. p. 23.
• Karen Lang, 'Spa-tshab Nyi-ma-grags and the Introduction of Prâsangika Madhyamaka into Tibet' in Epstein, Reflections on Tibetan Culture: Essays in Memory of Turrell V. Wylie (1989) pp. 127–141.
• Leonard van der Kuijp, 'Notes on the Transmission of Nagarjuna's Ratnavali in Tibet', in The Tibet Journal, Summer 1985, vol. X, No.2,4

Further reading

• Pa tshab lo tsA ba nyi ma grags pa, Tsadra Commons