Indian Buddhist poet, second century CE (per the Tibetan tradition; precise dates uncertain). Sanskrit name Mātṛceta / Mātṛceṭa. Author of three major stotra-cycles in praise of the Buddha:
- Śatapañcāśatka 百五十讚 (“One Hundred and Fifty Praises”) — the most widely cited; in the Kanripo corpus this work survives in Yìjìng’s Tang translation as KR6o0135 Yī-bǎi-wǔ-shí zàn fó sòng 一百五十讚佛頌 (T32n1680).
- Varṇārhavarṇa 四百讚 (“Four Hundred Praises”).
- Triratnastotra 三寶讚 (“Praise of the Three Jewels”).
The two main Tibetan historical sources, Bú-stön (Bu-ston) and Tāranātha, give different lineages: Bu-ston treats Mātṛceṭa as a disciple of Āryadeva; Tāranātha treats Mātṛceṭa, Aśvaghoṣa, and Āryaśūra as different names of the same person. Modern scholarship (Hahn, Bailey) treats them as distinct, with Mātṛceṭa probably postdating Aśvaghoṣa and predating the Suhṛllekha tradition.
His Śatapañcāśatka was one of the most-recited devotional texts in Indian and Central-Asian Buddhism; Yìjìng (in his pilgrimage memoir, Nán-hǎi jì-guī nèi-fǎ zhuàn 南海寄歸內法傳, T2125) reports that monastic students were required to memorize and recite it daily.
Sources: DILA Buddhist Person Authority A001749; Indo bukkyō: 243; Hahn, Michael. Invitation to Enlightenment (translation of the Lekha-dvaya attributed to Mātṛceṭa). Berkeley: Dharma Publishing, 1999; Bailey, D. R. Shackleton. The Śatapañcāśatka of Mātṛceṭa. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1951.