BU STON (1290–1364), also known as Bu ston Rin poche and Bu Lo tsā ba; properly, Rin chen grub pa; Tibetan Buddhist monk-scholar, translator, redactor, historian, and architect. In the annals of Tibetan Buddhism, Bu ston holds a singular position. He is renowned as the codifier of the Tibetan Buddhist canon and as the last great translator and systematizer prior to the fourteenth-century reformer Tsong kha pa. Considered to have been an incarnation of the Kashmiri saint Śākyaśrī bhadra (Tib., Kha che pang chen), Bu ston showed a precocious and prodigious talent for translation. Furthermore, he mastered certain aspects of the Tantras and became known as a chief authority on the Yoga Tantra cycles and on the Kālacakra system in particular.

Bu ston wrote one of the earliest authoritative histories of Buddhism, covering its development both in India and Tibet up to the fourteenth century...