Ratnakīrti

Ratnakīrti was a Buddhist scholar at the monastery of Vikramaśīla in the first half of the eleventh century. With Atiśa and his own teacher Jñānaśrīmitra he is recorded as a disciple of the master Dharmakīrti of Suvarṇadvīpa, and he was also a respected tantric master. Ten of his philosophical works survive in Sanskrit.

He described them as summaries of Jñānaśrīmitra’s much longer, often meandering works, but they are rather sharp, systematic restatements, each built around an inference stating the main point, and he quotes his opponents with care. Living some six centuries after Dignāga, he stands at the end of the last great cycle of attack and reply that this Buddhist tradition went through in India, so his works give a lucid picture of it in its final, most mature form.