Buddhapālita (470-540). A teacher and commentator of the Prāsaṇgika branch of the Madhyamaka school. He is the author of the Mūla-madhyamaka-vṛtti, a commentary on the Mūla-madhyamaka-kārikā of Nāgārjuna, the 2nd-century founder of the school. Buddhapālita's commentary, which survives in Tibetan, contains 27 chapters and is divided into ten sections. Buddhapālita's interpretation of Madhyamaka was criticized by the Svātantrika-Madhyamaka author Bhāvaviveka who was in turn refuted by Candrakīrti, the most famous exponent of the Prāsaṇgika interpretation.

A Dictionary of Buddhism, Oxford University Press, 2003, 2004 (which is available in electronic version from answer.com)

佛護 [py] Fóhù [wg] Fo-hu [ko] 불호 Pulho [ja] ブツゴ Butsugo ||| Buddhapālita (ca.470-540) a major scholar of the Indian Mādhyamika school 中觀派. He was known for the the development of a negative dialectic in the proof of the concept of emptiness, which put his way of thinking at odds with such Mādhyamika masters as Bhāvaviveka (清辯, c. 490-570), but in agreement with later figures such as Candrakīrti (月稱, c. 650). Some of the most important basic antagonistic positions within the broad Mādhyamika tradition can be seen in the disagreement between Bhāvaviveka and Buddhapālita: whīe Bhāvaviveka used one form of logical argumentation to establish the truth of emptiness in a positive manner, Buddhapālita denied the validity of the use of logical propositions which ended up affirming any sort of positive position. The position taken by Buddhapālita and Candrakīrti would later end up in the creation of a distinct branch of Mādhyamika called Prāsaṇgika (guimiulunzhengpai 歸謬論證派).

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