Bu-ston

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Bu-ston (1290–1364). Tibetan teacher, translator, and historian of Buddhism belonging to the Bkah-brgyud-pa ('ka-ju-pa') sect. 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. By the age of 32, he completed his History of Buddhism in Tibet to which he appended a theoretical classification of the canon based on a distinction between the direct teachings of the Buddha or Bkah-ḥgyur (‘Kan-jur’), and the treatises of commentary thereon or Bstan-ḥgyur (‘Ten-jur’). This became the accepted form of classification for the Tibetan canon.

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