Pāramiti / Bō-là-mì-dì 般剌蜜帝 (Tang, fl. early 8th century) — Indian translator-monk active at Cháng-ān, native of Central India (中天竺). His Sanskrit name Pāramiti is rendered in Chinese both phonetically (般剌蜜帝) and semantically (Shì Jí-liàng 釋極量 — “Bhikṣu of Ultimate-Measure”). Lifedates uncertain.
His sole — but enormously consequential — translation in the Chinese canon is the Dà fódǐng rúlái mìyīn xiūzhèng liǎo-yì zhū púsà wàn-xíng Shǒuléngyán jīng 大佛頂如來密因修證了義諸菩薩萬行首楞嚴經 (KR6j0118, T19n0945) — the Śūraṅgama-sūtra (Lèngyán jīng 楞嚴經), one of the most influential and most-debated scriptures in East Asian Buddhism. The translation was completed in 705 CE at the Zhì-chì-sì 制止寺 (also called Yúnshàn-sì) in Guǎngzhōu, in collaboration with Mí-jiā-shìjiā 彌伽釋迦 (oral translator) and Fáng Róng 房融 (the Tang minister who was a Buddhist devotee and served as scribe-recorder for the translation).
The text’s authenticity has been controversial since the Sòng period — some scholars (including modern Western Buddhological scholarship) have argued that the Śūraṅgama-sūtra is a Chinese apocryphal composition rather than a translation from Sanskrit. The traditional account makes Pāramiti the legitimate translator of an authentic Indian text; some modern scholarly views attribute the work to Fáng Róng’s Chinese composition with claimed Indian origin. The debate remains unresolved; the text has continuous canonical status in East Asian Buddhism regardless.
Source: DILA Buddhist Person Authority A000992; the colophon to T945; the Sòng Gāosēng-zhuàn 宋高僧傳 entry; Charles Luk (Lu K’uan-yü), The Śūraṅgama Sūtra (1966) for the traditional account; James A. Benn, “Another Look at the Pseudo-Śūraṅgama-sūtra” (Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 68, 2008) for the apocryphal-attribution argument.