atthakatha

atthakatha, commentaries on the Pali Buddhist canon that provide much information on the society, culture, and religious history of ancient India and Sri Lanka. The earliest commentaries, written in Pali, may have reached Sri Lanka along with the canon itself by the 3rd century bce. Between then and the 1st century ce they were translated into Sinhalese, and others were written in that language. In the 5th century the greatest commentator, Buddhaghosha, produced a reworking in Pali of much of the earlier material plus Dravidian commentaries and Sinhalese traditions. Within a century or two, others, notably Dhammapala, produced similar works on parts of the canon that Buddhaghosha had not covered.

The earlier atthakatha have not survived, but the works of Buddhaghosha and his successors are mines of information on the development of life and thought in the Theravada Buddhist community and provide much secular and legendary material as well. Doctrinally orthodox and stylistically elegant, they offer section-by-section philological and exegetical commentary, a critical comparison of various authorities, and lucid narrative.

These commentaries were themselves the subject of later commentaries known as tika (subcommentaries), and these in turn by others called anutika (“further commentary”). The earlier atthakatha also served as sources for the epic chronicles of Sri Lanka, the Dipavamsa (“History of the Island”) and Mahavamsa (“Great Chronicle”).