Paramatthamañjūsā

The Paramatthamañjūsā, the great subcommentary on the Visuddhimagga — the first of its two volumes.

The Visuddhimagga is the manual the four Nikāya commentaries refuse to repeat themselves against. This is the book that explains it line by line.

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).