Saraha

Saraha (Hindi: सरह), Sarahapa (Hindi: सरहपा, Oriya: ସରହପା), or Sarahapāda (Hindi: सरहपाद) (circa 8th century CE), originally known as Rāhula or Rāhulbhadra, was the first sahajiya and one of the Mahasiddhas, and is considered to be one of the founders of Buddhist Vajrayana, and particularly of the Mahamudra tradition. His dohas (couplets) are compiled in Dohakośa, the 'Treasury of Rhyming Couplets'. Padas (verses) 22, 32, 38 and 39 of Caryagītikośa (or Charyapada) are assigned to him. The script used in the dohas shows close resemblance with the present Oriya script which implies that Sarahapa has compiled his literature in the earlier language which has similarity with both Oriya language and Angika language (part of Maithili language).

In the opinion of Rahul Sankrityayan, Sarahapada was the earliest Siddha or Siddhācārya and the first poet of Oriya, Angika and Hindi literature . According to him, Sarahapāda was a student of Haribhadra, who was in turn a disciple of Shantarakshita, the noted Buddhist scholar who traveled to Tibet. As Śāntarakṣita is known to have lived in the mid-8th century from Tibetan historical sources and Haribhadra was a contemporary of Pāla king Dharmapala (770 – 815 CE), Sarahapāda must have lived in the late 8th century or early 9th century CE. From the colophon of a manuscript of Saraha’s Dohakośa, copied in Nepali Samvat 221 (1101 CE) and found from Royal Durbar Library in Nepal (most probably the earliest manuscript of Dohakośa), we know that many doha-s of Saraha were extant by that time, and thanks to the efforts of a scholar named Divakar Chanda, some of them preserved.

He was born in Eastern India to a Brahmin family and studied at the Buddhist monastic university Nalanda. According to Sankrityayan and Dvijram Yadav, Saraha was born in Raggyee village of ancient Bhagalpur, the then Capital of Anga Desh.