[3] Nāgārjuna is widely considered to be the founder of the Madhyamaka school of Buddhist philosophy and a defender of the Mahāyāna movement.

The MMK inspired a large number of commentaries in Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan, Korean and Japanese and continues to be studied today.

[8] Some scholars such as Joseph Walser argue that Nāgārjuna was an advisor to a king of the Sātavāhana dynasty which ruled the Deccan Plateau in the second century.

[11] He also argues that "it is plausible that he wrote the Ratnavali within a thirty-year period at the end of the second century in the Andhra region around Dhanyakataka (modern-day Amaravati).

The traditional religious hagiographies place Nāgārjuna in various regions of India (Kumārajīva and Candrakirti place him in Vidarbha region of South India,[16][17] Xuanzang in south Kosala)[10] Traditional religious hagiographies credit Nāgārjuna with being associated with the teaching of the Prajñāpāramitā sūtras as well as with having revealed these scriptures to the world after they had remained hidden for some time.

[19] Nāgas are found throughout Indian religious culture, and typically signify intelligent serpents or dragons that are responsible for rain, lakes, and other bodies of water.

Kumārajīva's biography for example, has Nāgārjuna making an elixir of invisibility, and Bus-ton, Taranatha and Xuanzang all state that he could turn rocks into gold.

It is strange that they would have spent so much time there and yet chose not to report any local tales of a man whose works played such an important part in the curriculum.

Modern scholars are divided on how to classify these later texts and how many later writers called "Nāgārjuna" existed (the name remains popular today in Andhra Pradesh).

This did not mean that they are not experienced and, therefore, non-existent; only that they are devoid of a permanent and eternal substance (svabhava) because, like a dream, they are mere projections of human consciousness.

According to David Seyfort Ruegg, the Madhyamakasastrastuti attributed to Candrakirti (c. 600 – c. 650) refers to eight texts by Nagarjuna:the (Madhyamaka)karikas, the Yuktisastika, the Sunyatasaptati, the Vigrahavyavartani, the Vidala (i.e. Vaidalyasutra/Vaidalyaprakarana), the Ratnavali, the Sutrasamuccaya, and Samstutis (Hymns).

[38] In his study, Burton relies on the texts that he considers "least controversial": Mūlamadhyamaka-kārikā, Vigrahavyāvartanī, Śūnyatāsaptati, Yuktiṣāṣṭika, Catuḥstava, Vaidalyaprakaraṇa and Ratnāvalī.

He relies on six works: MMK, Vigrahavyāvartanī, Śūnyatāsaptati, Yuktiṣāṣṭika, Vaidalyaprakaraṇa and Ratnāvalī, all of which "expound a single, coherent philosophical system," and are attributed to Nagarjuna by a variety of Indian and Tibetan sources.

TRV Murti considers Ratnāvalī, Pratītyasamutpādahṝdaya and Sūtrasamuccaya to be works of Nāgārjuna as the first two are quoted profusely by Chandrakirti and the third by Shantideva.

[43] Furthermore, Ruegg writes that "three collections of stanzas on the virtues of intelligence and moral conduct ascribed to Nagarjuna are extant in Tibetan translation": Prajñasatakaprakarana, Nitisastra-Jantuposanabindu and Niti-sastra-Prajñadanda.

Meanwhile, those texts that Lindtner considers as questionable and likely inauthentic are: Aksarasataka, Akutobhaya (Mulamadhyamakavrtti), Aryabhattaraka-Manjusriparamarthastuti, Kayatrayastotra, Narakoddharastava, Niruttarastava, Vandanastava, Dharmasamgraha, Dharmadhatugarbhavivarana, Ekaslokasastra, Isvarakartrtvanirakrtih (A refutation of God/Isvara), Sattvaradhanastava, Upayahrdaya, Astadasasunyatasastra, Dharmadhatustava, Yogaratnamala.

[45]Meanwhile, Lindtner's list of outright wrong attributions is: Mahāprajñāpāramitopadeśa (Dà zhìdù lùn), Abudhabodhakaprakarana, Guhyasamajatantratika, Dvadasadvaraka, Prajñaparamitastotra, and Svabhavatrayapravesasiddhi.

[46]Notably, the Dà zhìdù lùn (Taisho 1509, "Commentary on the great prajñaparamita") which has been influential in Chinese Buddhism, has been questioned as a genuine work of Nāgārjuna by various scholars including Lamotte.

[48] Several works considered important in esoteric Buddhism are attributed to Nāgārjuna and his disciples by traditional historians like Tāranātha from 17th century Tibet.

[49] Nāgārjuna's major thematic focus is the concept of śūnyatā (translated into English as "emptiness") which brings together other key Buddhist doctrines, particularly anātman "not-self" and pratītyasamutpāda "dependent origination", to refute the metaphysics of some of his contemporaries.

For Nāgārjuna, as for the Buddha in the early texts, it is not merely sentient beings that are "selfless" or non-substantial; all phenomena (dhammas) are without any svabhāva, literally "own-being", "self-nature", or "inherent existence" and thus without any underlying essence.

They are empty of being independently existent; thus the heterodox theories of svabhāva circulating at the time were refuted on the basis of the doctrines of early Buddhism.

Nāgārjuna means by real any entity which has a nature of its own (svabhāva), which is not produced by causes (akrtaka), which is not dependent on anything else (paratra nirapeksha).

Thus Nāgārjuna's philosophical project is ultimately a soteriological one meant to correct our everyday cognitive processes which mistakenly posits svabhāva on the flow of experience.

Conditions, refer to proliferating causes that bring a further event, state or process; without a metaphysical commitment to an occult connection between explaining and explanans.

[70] David Kalupahana sees Nāgārjuna as a successor to Moggaliputta-Tissa in being a champion of the middle-way and a reviver of the original philosophical ideals of the Buddha.

[71] Because of the high degree of similarity between Nāgārjuna's philosophy and Pyrrhonism, particularly the surviving works of Sextus Empiricus,[72] According to Thomas McEvilley this is because Nagarjuna was likely influenced by Greek Pyrrhonist texts imported into India.

According to Christopher I. Beckwith, Pyrrho's teachings are based on Buddhism, because the Greek terms adiaphora, astathmēta and anepikrita in the Aristocles Passage resemble the Buddhist three marks of existence.

[75] However, other scholars, such as Stephen Batchelor[76] and Charles Goodman[77] question Beckwith's conclusions about the degree of Buddhist influence on Pyrrho.