Kavidappaṇanīti

Kavidappaṇanīti, “the poet's mirror of conduct” — a collection of gnomic and didactic verse. The nīti books stand at the edge of the Pali world, and draw heavily on the Indian subhāṣita tradition rather than on the canon.

Its maker gives no name, and there is no critical edition of it at all — both scholars who have written on it cite it from the Chaṭṭha Saṅgāyana text, which is the text printed here. No date can be given, only two fixed points around it: it was circulating by the time of the Vajirasāratthasaṅgaha, and its verse 143 is the same verse that stands in Saṅgharakkhita's Moggallānapañcikāṭīkā (Gornall 2020, p. 84 n. 40).

Where it circulated is better established than when it was written. Schnake groups it with the Dhammanīti and the Lokanīti as nīti texts that “circulated in the North area, and probably enjoyed some success” — the northern Thai region and Lan Na, not Burma alone.

But the maker does give an account of himself. The closing verses of the Kavidappaṇanīti say he was born in the village of Kanaraya, four gāvutas west of a town they call Pakhukkū; that he had lived in Laṅkā and India; that he studied the Tipiṭaka for nine years under the monks of the Visutārāma and also under those of the Dakkhiṇārāma; and that he made the book while living at the Jotipāla as a teacher — Sundare jotipālamhi, vasatā gaṇavācinā. The poem on the twelve Myanmar months that follows it in this volume (CST4 paragraphs 1220–1347) ends at the same monastery, Visute jotipālamhi, “made by a scribe of many books”. Neither gives a year.