(Sanskrit: intermediate), important school in the Mahayana (Great Vehicle) Buddhisttion. Its name derives from its having sought a middle position between the realism of the Sarvastivada (Doctrine That All Is Real) school and the idealism of the Yogachara (Mind Only) school. The most renowned Madhyamika thinker was Nagarjuna (second century AD), who developed the doctrine that all is void ( shunyavada ). The three authoritative texts of the school are the Madhyamika-shastra (Sanskrit: Treatise of the Middle Way), the Dvadasha-dvara-shastra (Twelve Gates Treatise) by Nagarjuna, and the Shataka-shastra (One Hundred verses Treatise), attributed to his pupil Aryadeva.Buddhism in general assumed that the world is a cosmic flux of momentary interconnected events (dharmas), however the reality of these events might be viewed. Nagarjuna sought to demonstrate that the flux itself could not be held to be real, nor could the consciousness perceiving it, as it itself is part of this flux. Madhyamika thinkers thus strongly emphasize the mutations of human consciousness to grasp the reality of that which is ultimately real, beyond any duality. The world of duality could be assigned a practical reality of vyavahara (discourse and process), but, once the ultimate meaning ( paramartha ) of the void is grasped, this reality falls away. These ideals influenced Hindu thinkers, principally Gaudapada (seventh century) and Shankara (usually dated AD 788-820); the latter is therefore called a crypto-Madhyamika by his adversaries.The basic Madhyamika texts were translated into Chinese by Kumarajiva in the fifth century, and the teachings were further systematized as the Sanlunzong, or Three Treatises, school in the sixth-seventh century by Jizang. The school spread to Korea and was first transmitted to Japan, as Sanron, in 625 by the Korean monk Ekwan.