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Dānapāla. (C. Shihu; J. Sego; K. Siho 施護) (d.u.; fl. c. 980 CE). In Sanskrit, lit. "Protector of Giving"; one of the last great Indian translators of Buddhist texts into Chinese. A native of Oḍḍiyāna in the Gandhāra region of India, he was active in China during the Northern Song dynasty. At the order of the Song Emperor Taizhong (r. 960–997), he was installed in a translation bureau to the west of the imperial monastery of Taiping Xingguosi (in Yuanzhou, present-day Jiangxi province), where he and his team are said to have produced some 111 translations in over 230 rolls. His translations include texts from the prajñāpāramitā, Madhyamaka, and tantric traditions, including the Aṣṭasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā, Suvarṇaprabhāsottamasūtra, Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṃgraha, Hevajratantra, Nāgārjuna's Yuktiṣaṣtikā and Dharmadhātustava, and Kamalaśīla's Bhāvanākrama, as well as several dhāraṇī texts. (Source: "Dānapāla." In The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, 212. Princeton University Press, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46n41q.27.)
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