Luipa

Luipa or Luipada (Assamese: লুইপা, Bengali: লুইপা, Odia: ଲୁଇପା, c. 10th century) was a mahasiddhas or siddhacharya from East India. He was a poet and writer of a number of Buddhist texts.

Nomenclature and etymology

Although the Tibetan translation for Lui is "the fish-gut eater" (Wylie: nya lto zhabs ), the root of the word is probably Old Bengali lohita, a type of fish (the rohu) and the names like Luidhar, Luichandra and Luiya mentioned in the Dharmamangals of the late medieval period originated from the same root.

Ayyappapanicker & Akademi (1997: p. 599) amplify the view of prior scholarship in that the nomenclature "Luipa" is related to the Brahmaputra River:

Hagiographical accounts

Luipa appears in the The Legends of Eighty-four Siddhas (Wylie: grub thob brgyad bcu tsa bzhi'i lo rgyus ), a Tibetan namtar detailing the lives of Indian mahasiddhas. It was written by the Tibetan monk Mondup Sherab and was probably a translation of the Chaturashiti-Siddha-Pravritti, based on what was narrated to him by Abhayadattashri of Champaran (c. 12th century). In the Caturasiti-Siddha-Pravritti, Luipa is said to be the second son of a very rich king of Singhaladvipa, believed to be Sri Lanka. However, several other regions were also known as Singhaladvipa, and one of them was Oddiyana, which other sources mentioned as the place of birth of Luipa.