Ratnakarashanti
Ratnakarashanti (Skt. Ratnākaraśānti; Tib. རིན་ཆེན་འབྱུང་གནས་ཞི་བ་, rinchen jungné shyiwa, Wyl. rin chen 'byung gnas zhi ba, or shan+ti pa) (roughly 970 - possibly after 1042[1]) was a famous abbot at the great monastic university of Vikramashila in India who was active in the beginning of the 11th century. Under the name of Shantipa (Skt. Śāntipa; Tib. ཤན་ཏི་པ་, shan ti pa), he was also one of the eighty-four mahasiddhas, the great realized masters of the Vajrayana teachings. He was a contemporary and a teacher of Atisha and Abhayakaragupta.
There is a famous story that when Ratnakarashanti passed away, Atisha, who was in Tibet at the time, knew that and was grief stricken, saying that now no one in India was able to distinguish anymore between the Buddhist and the non-Buddhist.
Notes
- ↑ See Seton's entry in the Brill Encyclopedia.
