Jātakatthavaṇṇanā

Volume five of the Jātaka commentary, where the stories grow long. This volume runs to the end of the Asītinipāta, the stories told with eighty verses, ending with the Mahāsutasoma-jātaka.

Nobody knows who wrote it or when. The opening verses name three men who asked for it — Atthadassin, Buddhadeva and Buddhamitta — and mention the Mahāvihāra, but no author. There is no closing colophon either: the verses at the end were added by a scribe. The book does not even claim a title, and is called simply Jātakatthavaṇṇanā, the explanation of the meaning of the Jātaka. No date can be given.

It says nothing about earlier Jātaka commentaries, yet it clearly had one: the Samantapāsādikā mentions a Jātaka-aṭṭhakathā, and the parallel stories preserved in Buddhaghosa's commentaries show the older material at work behind the explanations of the verses. Tradition assigned this book to Buddhaghosa as well; Norman lists it there and 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).