Līnatthappakāsinī III

The Līnatthappakāsinī III on the Saṃyutta Nikāya commentary, covering the Sagāthāvagga. The subcommentary explains Buddhaghosa's commentary, not the sutta: it is the third storey of the building, and it assumes you are standing on the second.

Every date attached to Dhammapāla is a bracket, not a year. He quotes Bhartṛhari's Vākyapadīya, and Bhartṛhari can perhaps be placed at 450–510 CE, which puts Dhammapāla after 500 CE and younger than Buddhaghosa. The upper end is far weaker: no reliable limit has been found, and the first firm date is that Sāriputta was reading him in the 1100s. Hinüber says the date “remains uncertain”, and notes that the tradition makes him Ānanda's pupil while marking that link “perhaps” at its first mention (Hinüber 1996, p. 166, §356, and p. 169, §§365–366).

And the ascription itself is inherited rather than proved. The Suttanta subcommentaries carry no colophon naming an author. They are given to Dhammapāla by the Gandhavaṃsa and the Burmese Piṭakat-samuiṅ, and the attribution has travelled with them ever since; nothing inside the books says it.