Abhayakaragupta
Buddhist monk, scholar and tantric master
Abhayākaragupta (Wylie: 'jigs-med 'byung-gnas sbas-pa) was a Buddhist monk, scholar and tantric master (vajracarya) and the abbot of Vikramasila monastery in modern-day Bihar in India. He was born in somewhere in Eastern India, and is thought to have flourished in the late 11th-early 12th century CE, and died in 1125 CE.
Abhayākaragupta's magnum opus, the Vajravali, is a "grand synthesis of tantric liturgy" which developed a single harmonized tantric ritual system which could be applied to all Tantric Buddhist mandalas. According to A.K. Warder, Abhayākaragupta developed the Mantrayana-Madhyamaka doctrine to its final Indic form. Matthew Kapstein sees him as "among the last great masters of Buddhism in India."
Life
Some Tibetan sources identify his birthplace as Jarikhanda which Taranatha places next to Odisha. Gudrun Bühnemann identifies this as modern-day Jharkhand around the Chota Nagpur Plateau and Rahul Sankrityayan identified his birthplace with the modern-day town of Deoghar. The Tibetan translation of his work the Vajrayānāpattimañjarī states that he was "from Magadha" which is likely referring to where he worked around the monasteries of Nalanda and Vikramashila. He is said to have become a Buddhist monk following a prophetic vision after which he trained extensively in tantra.
Born in 1064 CE, as a youth, and on the advice of a young yogini, he went to the country of Magadha, "where he learned the five sciences and became well known as a pandit." During the reign of King Rāmapāla (c. 1075-1120), there was a great revival of Buddhism under Abhayākaragupta. He taught at the Vikramashila Mahavihara as well as at Vajrāsana (Bodh Gaya) and Odantapuri.
The public source identifies “Abhayakaragupta” as buddhist monk, scholar and tantric master. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Abhayakaragupta, Buddhist and monk.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4667351. VIAF identifies the subject as 264604374. The Library of Congress control number is no89006619. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1125, 1064, 1075 and 1120.
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This entry incorporates text from “Abhayakaragupta” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.