Paramatthadīpanī

The commentary on the Udāna, the first part of Dhammapāla's Paramatthadīpanī.

Dhammapāla is the second great figure of this literature, and everything about his date is a bracket rather than a year. He quotes Bhartṛhari's Vākyapadīya, and Bhartṛhari can perhaps be placed at 450–510 CE, which puts Dhammapāla after 500 CE and confirms that he is younger than Buddhaghosa. The other end is far weaker: no reliable upper limit has been found, and the first firm date is that Sāriputta was reading him in the 1100s. Hinüber says plainly that the date “remains uncertain”, and records that the tradition makes him the pupil of Ānanda while marking that link “perhaps” when he first mentions it (Hinüber 1996, p. 166, §356, and p. 169, §§365–366).

He worked at the Badaratittha monastery in South India, and closes each part of the Paramatthadīpanī by saying that he wrote it there “after the style of the old commentaries” (porāṇaṭṭhakathānayaṃ) (Norman 1983, p. 134). The Paramatthadīpanī is a single undertaking covering seven books of the Khuddaka Nikāya: Udāna, Itivuttaka, Petavatthu, Vimānavatthu, Theragāthā, Therīgāthā and Cariyāpiṭaka.