Bālāvatāra

“An Introduction for Beginners” — and the most used grammar of them all. The Bālāvatāra “is much used in Ceylon and Burma”: like the Rūpasiddhi it rearranges Kaccāyana, giving the same contents in a different and slightly more concise form.

Who wrote it is unsettled, and the two answers are a century apart. It is given to the Dhammakitti who composed the Saddhammasaṅgaha at the end of the 1300s CE; the Gandhavaṃsa gives it instead to Vācissara, which would make it 1200s CE. A third possibility is that Dhammakitti was responsible only for the Mahāsannaya, the Sinhalese gloss on it, and not for the grammar at all.

Kaccāyana's is the earliest Pali grammar we have, and almost nothing is known about it. He must be later than Buddhaghosa, who never refers to him; if he used the Kāsikā he is later than the 600s CE, but that evidence is disputed — so the honest statement of his date is after Buddhaghosa, possibly after 600 CE, with no upper limit. Nothing is known of the man but his name, and he seems unconnected with any other Kaccāyana known from Sanskrit or Pali. His work owes much to Pāṇini and to the Kātantra.