Indian royal advisors

Bodhidharma was a semi-legendary Buddhist monk who lived during the 5th or 6th century CE. He is traditionally credited as the transmitter of Chan Buddhism to China, and is regarded as its first Chinese patriarch. He is also popularly regarded as the founder of Shaolin kung fu, an idea popularized in the 20th century, but based on the 17th century Yijin Jing and the Daoist association of daoyin gymnastics with Bodhidharma.

thumb|Rewalsar Lake#Colossus of Padmasambhava|Colossus of Padmasambhava, 123 ft. (37.5 m) high, in mist overlooking [[Rewalsar Lake, Himachal Pradesh, India]]

', also transliterated Ashvaghosha' (, ; lit. "Horse-Cry"; ; ) ( CE), was a Buddhist philosopher, dramatist, poet, musician, and orator from India. He was born in Saketa, today known as Ayodhya.

thumb|King Milinda and Nāgasena. Nāgasena was a Sarvāstivādan Buddhist sage who lived around 150 BC. His answers to questions about Buddhism posed by Menander I (Pali: Milinda), the Greek king in northwestern India, are recorded in the Milindapañhā and the Sanskrit Nāgasenabhiksusūtra. According to Pali accounts, he was born into a Brahmin family in the Himalayas and was well-versed in the Vedas at an early age. However, he later converted to Buddhism.

thumb|right|250px|Central Asian bhikkhu|Buddhist monk teaching a Chinese monk. [[Bezeklik Caves, 9th–10th century; although Albert von Le Coq (1913) assumed the blue-eyed, red-haired monk was a Tocharian, modern scholarship has identified similar Caucasoid figures of the same cave temple (No. 9) as ethnic Sogdians, an Eastern Iranian people who inhabited Turfan as an ethnic minority community during the phases of Tang Chinese (7th–8th century) and Uyghur rule (9th–13th century).]]

Bodhisena or Bodaisenna (704–760 CE) was a Buddhist scholar and monk from India known for traveling to Japan and China and establishing the Kegon school, the Japanese transmission of the Huayan school of Chinese Buddhism. He is the first known Indian visitor to Japan.

Sanghabhadra (5th century CE, Sanskrit: संघभद्र, Ch. 僧伽跋陀羅・衆賢, Japanese: Sōgyabaddara or Shugen) was an Indian scholar monk of the Sarvāstivāda Vaibhāṣika and "undoubtedly one of the most brilliant Abhidharma masters in India". Born in Kashmir, he was a contemporary of the Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu. According to K.L. Dhammajoti, his work forms the most mature and refined form of Vaibhāṣika philosophy. His two main works, the * (Ch. 順正理論, Shun zhengli lun; "In Accordance with the Truth") and the * (Ch. 阿毘達磨顯宗論, Apidamo xian zong lun; "Treatise Clarifying the Treasury of Abhidharma"), are