Mahāvaṃsa

The Great Chronicle of Ceylon — the frame inside which almost every date in this collection sits. It is the Mahāvaṃsa that places Buddhaghosa's arrival in the reign of king Mahānāma, and so the Mahāvaṃsa that every argument about his date begins from.

Its own date is about 450–500 CE, at the end of the fifth century and roughly a century after the Dīpavaṃsa. The reasoning is indirect: the author seems to be later than Buddhaghosa, since he may have polished his style on the new Aṭṭhakathā. The commentary names him — a Mahānāma of the monastery of the general Dīghasanda — and nothing else is known of him; identifications with others of that very common name are speculation.

He says in his introduction what he means to avoid: the faults of his predecessors, which he names as verbosity, excessive brevity and repetition. At 2,904 verses the result is more than twice the length of the Dīpavaṃsa, and thirty-five of its thirty-six chapters close with a verse in an elaborate metre rather than the usual śloka. The text's own opening gives the title; the commentary supplies a second, Padyapadoruvaṃsagāthā.