Butön rin-chen-grup (1290-1364)

(Tibetan, Bu-ston rin-chen grub). A Tibetan teacher, translator, and historian of Buddhism. He was born in Tsang in southern Tibet and trained as a Kagyü monk, spending much of his life studying and teaching at the college of Zhalu. He became a novice at 17 and was ordained as a monk at 23. By the age of 30 he had studied under all the great teachers of his day and began to compose treatises in his own name and to translate and edit the canon.

Butön was involved with the redaction and classification of the two parts of the Tibetan Buddhist canon, the Kanjur and the Tenjur. His systematization of these texts became one of the chief bases for the structure of the later printed versions of this corpus of texts. He also composed many texts and commentaries, of which his Doctrinal History (chos-'byung) is especially noteworthy as it contains a chronicle of the history of Buddhism in India, Nepal, and Tibet as well as an index to all the translations in the Kanjur and the Tenjur. Bu-ston's works number over 200 items, and the impetus he gave to Buddhist scholarship in Tibet was considerable and especially timely in view of the imminent extinction of Buddhism in India.

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