The Viśeṣa-stava is a
Buddhist
Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...
''
stotra
''Stotra'' (Sanskrit: स्तोत्र) is a Sanskrit word that means "ode, eulogy or a hymn of praise."Monier Williams, Monier Williams' Sanskrit-English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Article on 'Stotra'' It is a literary genre of In ...
'' by the author Udbhaṭasiddhasvāmin and has pride of place as the text that opens the
Tibetan bsTan 'gyur. Originally written in
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
, it was extensively propagated and sung. It was written to demonstrate the superiority of Buddhism over ''
tirthikas''. It has long been only known from its Tibetan translation (in the 9th century by the efforts of Sarvajñadeva and the Tibetans Rin-chen-mchog (d. 840) and Dpal-brtseg Rakṣita). Now, it is also known in a Sanskrit version thanks to Johannes Schneider and Liu Zhen's study.
At the time of its translation into
Tibetan, the Indian
pandita Prajñāvarman
Prajñāvarman (Tibetan: ''shes rab go cha'') within early medieval literature, was an 8th-century Buddhist writer. He lived during the reigns of the Pala king, Gopala I and the Tibetan emperor Trisong Detsen, under whose auspices he came to T ...
wrote a commentary on it which immediately follows it in the bsTan 'gyur.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Visesastava
Buddhist texts