Buddhist India c19.19

c19.19

Shortly after the Island Chronicle was composed, the celebrated Buddhaghosa, a brahmin from Behar, came over to Ceylon, and rewrote in Pali the old Sinhalese commentaries. His work supplanted the latter, which are now lost, and is the only evidence we have of the nature of the ancient tradition. He quotes, from the old Sinhalese commentary, a number of the mnemonic verses also contained in the Island Chronicle, and gives us, in Pali, the substance of the Sinhalese prose with which they had originally been accompanied.