Paramatthadīpanī

The commentary on the Theragāthā, the verses of the elder monks, in Dhammapāla's Paramatthadīpanī. This is the first of its two volumes.

Dhammapāla is the second great figure of this literature, and every date attached to him 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 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 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).

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 one undertaking spanning seven books of the Khuddaka Nikāya — Udāna, Itivuttaka, Petavatthu, Vimānavatthu, Theragāthā, Therīgāthā and Cariyāpiṭaka — so this volume is a seventh of a single design, not a book on its own.