Aryadeva (3rd Century CE), was a disciple of Nagarjuna and author of several important Mahayana Madhyamaka Buddhist texts. He is also known as Kanadeva the 15th patriarch in the Zen tradition and Bodhisattva Deva in Shri Lanka where he was born as the son of a king. Some Chinese sources however, suggest he was born in Southern India in a Brahmanical family.Most of Aryadeva's works were not preserved in the original Sanskrit, but they mainly survived in Tibetan and Chinese translations.His best-known text is probably the Catusataka (400 verses), in sixteen chapters of twenty-five stanzas each.One of his best-known students is Asvagosha.Several important works of esoteric Buddhism (most notably the Caryamelapakapradipa or "Lamp that Integrates the Practices") are attributed to Aryadeva. Contemporary research suggests that these works are datable to a significantly later period in Buddhist history (late ninth or early tenth century), but the tradition of which they are a part maintains t