Mohavicchedanī

The file's heading is not the name of this work. The colophon settles it: Iti coḷaraṭṭhe mahākassapattherena viracitā Mohavicchedanī nāma Abhidhammamātikatthavaṇṇanā niṭṭhitā — the exposition of the meaning of the Abhidhamma matrices, called Mohavicchedanī, composed by the elder Mahākassapa in the Coḷa country. The second title is descriptive, and it is the one the file inherited.

“The Destroyer of Confusion” is a lucid commentary on the mātikās — the matrices, the lists of terms that open and organise each Abhidhamma book — of all seven canonical treatises, worked from the texts together with their commentaries.

The author hides his name in a pun and the date has to be inferred. He calls himself dhutadharaggasamaṇa, “like the foremost of those who keep the ascetic practices” — Kassapa. He lived on the Kāverī in the Coḷa country, in the Nāganana monastery built by Rājādhirāja, and if he is the Kassapa named among the initiators of the subcommentary on the Vinayavinicchaya, the book belongs to about 1200 CE. The Vimativinodanī is given to the same man. Hinüber pairs this book with Sāriputta's Vinayasaṅgaha as the two that close the age of comprehensive handbooks — one for the Abhidhamma, one for the Vinaya.