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{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2019}}
'''Medhankara''' is the name of several distinguished members, in medieval times, of the [[Buddhism|Buddhist]] order:

* The oldest flourished about 1200, and was the author of the ''Vinaya Artha Samuccaya'', a work in the [[Sinhalese language]] on Buddhist [[Canon law]].
* Next after him came Araññaka Medhankara, who presided over the Buddhist council held at [[Polonnaruwa]], then the capital of [[Ceylon]] (now [[Sri Lanka]]), in 1250. 
* The third, Vanaratana Medhankara, flourished in 1280, and wrote a poem in [[Pāli]], ''Jina Carita'', on the life of the [[Gautama Buddha|Buddha]]. He also wrote the ''Payoga Siddhi''.
* The fourth was the celebrated scholar to whom King [[Parākrama Bāhu IV]] of Ceylon entrusted in 1307 the translation from Pali into Sinhalese of the Jātaka book, the most voluminous extant work in Sinhalese. 
* The fifth, a [[Bamar|Burmese]], was called the [[Sangharaja]] Nava Medhankara, and wrote in Pali a work entitled the ''Loka Padipa fara'', on [[cosmogony]] and allied subjects.

==References==
*{{EB1911|wstitle=Medhankara|author=[[Thomas William Rhys Davids]]}} This work in turn cites:
** ''Journal of the Pali Text Society'', 1882, p.&nbsp;126; 1886, pp.&nbsp;62, 67, 72; 1890, p.&nbsp;63; 1896, p.&nbsp;43.
** Mahāvaṃsa, ch. xl., verse 85.

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[[Category:Theravada]]
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