The following post is titled, A Brief Sketch of the Life of Buddhagupta-nātha. By Thomas Roth, a contributing author to the Jonangpa blog.

Buddhagupta

Jonang Jetsun Rinpoche, better known as Jonang Tāranātha (1575-1635), is well known for the many histories that he authored. Especially his famous History of Buddhism in India, The Seven Instruction Lineages and the Origin of the Tārā-Tantras, as well as his Kālacakra and Vajrabhairava histories, give us a fairly good idea of the development of many siddha lineages in India and their continuation onto Tibetan soil. The source for many of these accounts was an Indian master whom Tāranātha met around the year 1594 near Narthang in Central Tibet, while he himself stayed in a hermitage called “Mahābodhi.” That master was none other than the Mahāsiddha Buddhagupta-nātha, who was a disciple of the very famous Mahāsiddha Shanti-Gupta. Shanti-Gupta’s biography is added as an appendix to Tāranātha’s Seven Instruction Lineages, whereas his biography of Buddhagupta-nātha appears as a separate text.^[1]

There is an intriguing and somewhat mystifying narrative that has been popularized about the Tibetan Jonang master Tāranātha (1575-1635). This narrative suggests an account of Tāranāha's life story in which he traveled to Mongolia from his seat at Takten Damchö Ling Monastery in Central Tibet during the latter part of his life and that while there, he established several monasteries before finally passing away in Ulan Bator, the capital city in the republic of the Mongols.

This narrative on Tāranāha's travels and death in Mongolia has become so popular and widely accepted as factual that it is often the standard account given on the web and is commonly found in publications.^[1] Yet considering its regular appearance in English language sources, it became apparent to me a few years ago while in conversation with a Jonang lama in Amdo about the life of Tāranāha that this narrative was mostly unknown to contemporary Jonangpas in Tibet. So where did this narrative originate? Why? And what other narratives about the final days and death of Tāranāha do we find in Jonang sources?