Thūpavaṃsa

The chronicle of the Great Stūpa — the building of the Mahāthūpa, the Ruvanväli or Suvaṇṇamāli, at Anurādhapura by king Duṭṭhagāmaṇi, who is the central figure of the book. It traces the relic enshrined there back to the division of the relics after the parinibbāna, and brings in other buildings, the Lohapāsāda among them.

Vācissara composed it in the second half of the 1200s CE, from sources like those behind the Mahābodhivaṃsa and perhaps from the Extended Mahāvaṃsa as well. He is the same scholar to whom the older subcommentary on the Abhidhammāvatāra and two of the sīmā manuals are ascribed.

What happened to books of this kind afterwards is worth knowing. Godakumbura describes the pattern: the Pali chronicle and its Sinhalese counterpart stood side by side until the Sinhalese had grown too archaic to read, and the Sinhalese was then rewritten with the help of the Pali. He names the Siṃhala-thūpavaṃsaya among his examples — so the Pali text became the means by which the vernacular one survived.