Buddhabhadra (Fótuóbátuóluó 佛馱跋陀羅, “Awakened Worthy”; Chinese rendering Juéxián 覺賢; also Fódùbátuóluó 佛度跋陀羅 etc.) was an Indian translator-monk active in early-fifth-century China and one of the principal architects of the Chinese Buddhist textual heritage. Born in central India in 359 (per the Gāosēng zhuàn 高僧傳, T2059, 334b–335c) into a family of the Śākya clan, he studied meditation and Vinaya under Buddhasena (佛大先) in Kashmir before being summoned eastward at the request of the Chinese pilgrim Zhì Yán 智嚴 (智嚴). Travelling overland through the Pamirs and the Tarim oases, he reached Cháng’ān in or around 408 (variants 406/407 in the sources), where he initially collaborated with Kumārajīva (鳩摩羅什). A doctrinal-disciplinary clash with Kumārajīva’s circle — Buddhabhadra was a strict dhyāna-practitioner of the northern meditational lineage, while the Cháng’ān assembly was developing its own scholastic style — led to his expulsion. He moved south, joining 慧遠 Huìyuǎn at Lúshān 廬山 (where he translated the Dámóduōluó chán jīng 達摩多羅禪經, T618, in 410–413), and finally settled at the Dàochǎngsì 道場寺 in Jiànkāng 建康 (modern Nánjīng) under the patronage of the Eastern Jìn court.
There, between 418 and 420, he led the translation of the [[KR6e0001|Dà fāngguǎng fó huáyán jīng 大方廣佛華嚴經]] / Buddhāvataṃsaka in 60 fascicles — the foundational text of the Chinese Huáyán tradition — working from a 36,000-verse Sanskrit (or Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit) original brought from Khotan by the monk Zhī Fǎlǐng 支法領, with 法業 Shì Fǎyè as scribe. He also translated the Mahāsāṅghika Vinaya (《摩訶僧祇律》, T1425) in collaboration with the returning pilgrim 法顯 Fǎxiǎn (416–418); the Guān Fó sānmèi hǎi jīng 觀佛三昧海經 (T643); the Dà fāngděng rúláizàng jīng 大方等如來藏經 (T666; the earliest Chinese rendering of the Tathāgatagarbha-sūtra); the Wúliàngshòu jīng 無量壽經 fragments; the Fóshuō chūshēng wúliàngmén chí jīng 佛說出生無量門持經 (T1012); and several short discourses and Vinaya-related works. He died at the Dàochǎng-sì in Yuánjiā 元嘉 6 (429) at the age of 71.
Buddhabhadra’s importance is twofold. First, his translations introduced into Chinese several texts of fundamental importance for the development of distinctive East Asian Buddhist traditions — above all the Huáyán jīng, which became the scriptural basis of the Huáyán school under Dùshùn 杜順, 智儼 Zhìyǎn, and 法藏 Fǎzàng, and the Tathāgatagarbhasūtra, which seeded a long lineage of Chinese reflection on innate Buddha-nature. Second, he embodied the early-fifth-century encounter between the northern dhyāna tradition and southern Chinese court patronage: his Lúshān connection and his Dàochǎngsì translation bureau established a southern alternative to the Cháng’ān centre and shaped the institutional style of subsequent Liú-Sòng-period translation work.