Visuddhajanavilāsinī

The commentary on the Apadāna, under the title Visuddhajanavilāsinī. Of all the commentaries in this layer it is the odd one out, and it says so itself.

Where and when it was written are both unknown. It is certainly late — no other commentary quotes it — and it may have been composed in Southeast Asia rather than in Ceylon; a colophon says only that Guṇasobhana brought it to the island. No numeric date can be given.

What makes it unusual is that it refuses the inheritance. The older commentaries exist to transmit the Sinhalese Aṭṭhakathā; this one calls that material contradictory and inadequate and declines to follow it, opening instead with a long quotation from the Jātaka-nidāna. Its coverage is just as uneven: the Buddha-apadāna and the Paccekabuddha-apadāna at length, Apadānas 1–180 in full, 181–561 in a few words each, and the Therī-apadāna not at all. It cites the Sanskrit grammars of Pāṇini, Candra and the Kātantra. Tradition nonetheless filed it under Buddhaghosa, and Norman, listing it there, adds that “there is some doubt about the last five” — the Dhammapada, the Jātaka, the Khuddakapāṭha, the Suttanipāta and the Apadāna (Norman 1983, p. 121).