Līnatthapadavaṇṇanā (Abhidhamma mūlaṭīkā)

The mūlaṭīkā on the Atthasālinī, the commentary on the Dhammasaṅgaṇī.

Ānanda's are the first subcommentaries ever written, and that is what the word mūlaṭīkā means — the basic ones, the first of their kind. The Mahāvihāra subcommented the Abhidhamma before it subcommented the Suttanta, so this layer of the literature begins here.

He can be dated only by other people. He lived at Kalasapura, a place otherwise unknown, and is placed before Dhammapāla and after Buddhaghosa by way of Vajirabuddhi and the Vinayagaṇṭhipada — roughly 450–600 CE, with nothing firmer available.

Even the title is uncertain. Hinüber records three: they “were originally also called Līnatthajotikā ‘Illustrator of the Hidden Meaning’ … or Līnatthapadavaṇṇanā ‘Explanation of Words with a Hidden Meaning’ as in the colophon, or Paramatthapakāsanī” (Hinüber 1996, p. 166, §356). The name used here is the colophon's, not necessarily the author's. The books begin abruptly, with no introduction at all, and a verse colophon survives at the end of only one of the three — the Atthasālinī-mūlaṭīkā, which names Ānanda as author and Dhammamitta as the monk who asked for the work.