Zhú Fǎhù 竺法護 (Skt. Dharmarakṣa; sobriquets 月支菩薩 Yuèzhī púsà “the Yuezhi Bodhisattva” and 敦煌菩薩 Dūnhuáng púsà “the Dūnhuáng Bodhisattva”; DILA Authority A000749; 239–316) was the most prolific translator of the third century and the principal architect of the Western Jìn 西晉 translation tradition. The biographical sources are the Chū sānzàng jì jí 出三藏記集 (T2145, 97c–98c) and the Gāosēng zhuàn 高僧傳 (T2059, 326c–327a). He was a Yuezhi (月氏) by descent (his Chinese surname 竺 is the catalogue convention for monks of Indian origin, and his original surname is given as 支), born and raised in Dūnhuáng 敦煌 on the Silk Road. He was ordained at the age of eight under an Indian master named Zhú Gāo-zuò 竺高座, from whom he received the name Zhú Fǎhù; he travelled extensively through the Western Regions, learning thirty-six languages, and acquiring a vast library of Indic Buddhist manuscripts.
He arrived in Cháng’ān during the Tàishǐ 泰始 reign-period (265–274) and worked first there and then at Luòyáng and Cháng’ān throughout the Western Jìn, until his death at Cháng’ān in Jiànxīng 建興 4 (316), aged 78. The Chū sānzàng jì jí attributes some 154 translations to him in 309 fascicles, of which 95 in 208 fascicles survive — by far the largest single translator’s contribution to the Chinese canon before Kumārajīva. His most important translations include the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka (T263 Zhèng-fǎ-huá jīng 正法華經, the earliest Chinese version of the Lotus, completed 286), the Lalitavistara (T186 Pǔ-yào jīng 普曜經), the Pañcaviṃśati-sāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā (T222 Guāng-zàn jīng 光讚經, completed 286), the Vimaladattā-paripṛcchā (T338), the Akṣayamati-paripṛcchā (T403), the Bhadrakalpika (T425), and many smaller Āgama extractions including the [[KR6a0047|Lí-shuì jīng 離睡經]] (T47). His translation idiom is one of the most distinctive in the early canon and provides a major comparand for the diachronic study of Chinese Buddhist translation between An Shigao and Kumārajīva.