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Who founded the Madhyamika school of Mahayana philosophy?

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Mahayana Guanyin and attendant bodhisattvas, detail of a painted cave mural, Kansu province, China, early 8th century.

The Madhyamika ("Middle Way") school of Mahayana Buddhist philosophy was founded by the Indian philosopher Nagarjuna, who flourished during the 2nd century CE.12

Nagarjuna is traditionally credited with transforming the poetic and paradoxical declarations on emptiness found in the Prajnaparamita sutras into a formal philosophical system. His most significant contribution to the school is his seminal work, the Mulamadhyamakakarika ("Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way"), in which he articulated the doctrine of emptiness (shunyata)—the concept that all phenomena lack intrinsic existence or "own being" (svabhava). By establishing a middle position between the extremes of existence and nonexistence, Nagarjuna provided the foundational framework for the Madhyamika tradition.132