Manual of Indian Buddhism c3.s2.3

c3.s2.3

Beginning with the South, we first have the Aṭṭhakathā, a body of commentaries on the various parts of the Tipiṭaka³. According to Simhalese tradition the Aṭṭhakathā was fixed at the first Convocation, and rehearsed at the two following Councils; it was introduced by Mahendra along with the holy texts into Ceylon, and translated by the same into Simhalese; it was not put to writing before the reign of Abhaya Vaṭṭagāmani, in the last century B. C., and retranslated into Pāli by Buddhaghoṣa about A. D. 420⁴. It is easy to see that those statements are a mixture of dogmatical fiction and truth. This much is well ascertained that there existed a collection of commentaries of semi-sacred character under the name of Aṭṭhakathā in the time when the Dīpavaṃsa was written, about A. D. 300, but we are in the dark about the relative age of its various portions, and we possess as yet no sufficient data for making out what has been added or changed after A. D. 300, either by Buddhaghoṣa or by others. The story in the Mahāvaṃsa according to which Buddhaghoṣa translated the whole Aṭṭhakathā is in conflict with some well established facts. The commentary on the Thera- and Therīgāthā titled Paramattha-Dīpanī, and some other commentaries have been composed by Dhammapāla of Kāñcīpura, and not by Buddhaghoṣa¹. Further it should be noted that Buddhaghoṣa in his Samanta-Pāsādikā quotes the Dīpavaṃsa by name. The Aṭṭhakathā being professedly older then the chronicle, his work cannot have been a simple translation, or he must have found those quotations in his original and in that case some portions of the Aṭṭhakathā must have been posterior to the chronicle.