Līnatthavaṇṇanā (on the Nettiaṭṭhakathā)

The Līnatthavaṇṇanā on the Nettippakaraṇa commentary — a subcommentary on Dhammapāla's own commentary on the Netti, and so the one place in this layer where the same hand may be answering itself.

Every date attached to Dhammapāla is a bracket, not 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 upper end is far weaker: no reliable 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).

And the ascription itself is inherited rather than proved. The Suttanta subcommentaries carry no colophon naming an author. They are given to Dhammapāla by the Gandhavaṃsa and the Burmese Piṭakat-samuiṅ, and the attribution has travelled with them ever since; nothing inside the books says it.