Vinayasaṅgaha-aṭṭhakathā

The Vinayasaṅgaha, a digest that reorganises the whole Vinaya by subject instead of following the canon's own order — pālimuttaka, “outside the text”, is the word it uses for its own method. Twenty-four chapters of very uneven length.

Its date is a reign: 1153–1186 CE, under Parakkamabāhu I, who is himself the royal initiator of the work. Sāriputta is the leading scholar of that Ceylonese revival and the head of a school; his pupil Buddhanāga carried the work on. The subcommentary on Buddhadatta's Vinayavinicchaya praises his learning and lists not only his subcommentaries on the Samantapāsādikā and the Manorathapūraṇī but a jotisattha as well — a work on astronomy.

No author is named in the book itself. The attribution to Sāriputta comes from the Gandhavaṃsa and the Sāsanavaṃsa, and Hinüber's verdict is that it “seems trustworthy” (Hinüber 1996, p. 158, §334) — which is as far as the evidence goes. In substance the book is a rearranged Samantapāsādikā: as far as can be seen it uses only the Vinaya and that commentary, and even its quotations from the old Aṭṭhakathā look borrowed from it. It closes the age of comprehensive Vinaya handbooks. Vinaya questions go on being argued after it, but what follows are compilations.