After mastering the Chinese language, Kumārajīva settled as a translator and scholar in Chang'an (c. 401 CE) under the patronage of the Later Qin dynasty during the Sixteen Kingdoms period.

"[16] However, when Fu Jian's main army at the capital was defeated, his general Lü Guang declared his own state and became a warlord in 386 CE, and had Kumārajīva captured when he was around 40 years old.

[19] Finally the armies of Emperor Yao succeeded in defeating the Lü family, and Kumārajīva was brought east to the capital of Chang'an in 401 CE.

[5] Yao Xing looked upon him as his own teacher, and many young and old Chinese Buddhists flocked to him, learning both from his direct teachings and through his translation bureau activities at the Xiaoyao Gardens where daily sessions were held (attended by over a thousand monks).

[5] Kumarajiva had four main disciples who worked on his team: Daosheng (竺道生), Sengzhao (僧肇), Daorong (道融), and Sengrui (僧睿).

Kumārajīva's readable translation style was distinctive, possessing a flowing smoothness that reflects his prioritization on conveying the meaning as opposed to precise literal rendering.

According to Jan Nattier, this is actually an erroneous and mistaken view, and the main difference was due to the earlier versions of Kumarajiva's source texts: [W]here Kumārajīva's work can be compared with an extant Indic manuscript – that is, in those rare cases where part or all of a text he translated has survived in a Sanskrit or Prakrit version — a somewhat surprising result emerges.

While his translations are indeed shorter in many instances than their extant (and much later) Sanskrit counterparts, when earlier Indic-language manuscript fragments are available they often provide exact parallels of Kumārajīva's supposed "abbreviations."

[46] Eric Greene explains that the main methods of mediation taught in T. 614 are the "five gates of chan" (五門禪) "associated with the so-called yogācāras of northwest India", which "became a standard arrangement in later writings on meditation" and are the following:[47] After having calmed the mind and entered dhyāna (chan 禪) through these methods, the meditator then proceeds to develop wisdom (prajñā) by cultivating the four "foundations of mindfulness" (si nian chu 思念處; smṛtyupasthāna).

According to Greene, "following this, one moves through the so-called four nirvedha-bhāgīya-kuśalamūla (si shan gen 四善根), the "roots of good that lead to liberation", which in the Sarvāstivādin system are the highest levels of mundane accomplishment.

This in turn leads to the so-called “path of vision” (darśana-maraga), a sequence of sixteen mental moments in which, by means of insight into the four noble truths.

[49] Other translations include the Da zhuang yan jing lun 大莊嚴經論 (*Mahālaṃkāra-sūtra-śāstra) of Asvaghosa and Samyukta avadana sutra.

According to Robinson,Kumārajīva's additions to the Vinaya section of the Chinese canon are the Sarvāstivāda-vinaya (T. 1435), the Sarvāstivāda-prātimokṣa-sutra (T. 1436), and, according to tradition, the Pu-sa-chieh-p n (bodhisattva-prātimokṣa), which is probably the second half of the present Brahmajala-sutra (T.

Regarding Kumārajīva's own philosophical views, according to Richard H. Robinson:He shows himself to be an orthodox Śūnyavādin and Mādhyamika, rejects the authority of the Abhidharma, and interprets the Āgamas in a Mahāyāna way, holds that the Buddha's statements are purely pragmatic and do not imply any real entities, and denies that real entities arise, because (a) neither inherence nor non-inherence of the effect in the cause is admissible, and (b) simultaneous and successive occurrence of cause and effect are alike untenable.

[57] Thompson adds,Like both the Prajñāpāramita sutras and Madhyamika commentaries, Kumārajīva says that the Buddha's teachings ultimately come from and lead us to a level beyond words and thought.

Because the Buddha and Bodhisattvas reside in this transcendent realm (which is none other than our present world) their wisdom enables them to use various upaya to lead suffering beings to enlightenment.

Apparent contradictions and confusions in Buddhist texts are due to their upāya, which accommodate to the audience's level and lead them to the truth.

This success is so great that even when, in the subsequent centuries, other scholars produced new and supposedly improved translations of the same texts, it has been the “Kumarajiva versions” that have remained in use in the devotional, exegetical, and literary life of East Asia up to the present day.

In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as the Sinitic Buddhist traditions have contributed to the emergence of a distinctly global modernist Buddhism, the Kumarajiva corpus of early fifth-century translations has been an implicit major presence.

This is because they had been influenced by Neo-Taoist Xuanxue philosophy and thus they saw emptiness as either a kind of non-being, as a real, or absolute substance (both of which are mistaken interpretations of the concepts of śūnyatā and anatman).

[63] Kumārajīva and his students like Sengzhao and Sengrui recognized these errors and worked to correct them by introducing proper interpretations based on Indian Madhyamaka philosophy.