Vajirabuddhi-ṭīkā

Everyone calls this a ṭīkā; the author calls it something else. He describes his own book as a ganthipada, a gloss on hard passages, and says at the end that it opens up the knotty places of the Samantapāsādikā.

It is the most important witness we have for how the Vinaya was read between Buddhaghosa and Sāriputta, and it has hardly been used. The difference in method is the point: where Sāriputta summarises his predecessors, Vajirabuddhi argues with them, setting out the differing opinions rather than resolving them away.

Nothing is known about the man, and his date is built entirely out of other people's. He calls Ānanda of Kalasapura his teacher, cites a ganthipada by Dhammasiri and an older Porāṇaganthipada, and since Ānanda in turn cites Dhammasiri, the order Porāṇaganthipada → Dhammasiri → Ānanda → Vajirabuddhi follows. That is a sequence, not a date; converted into years it puts the whole group inside 450–600 CE, and if Dhammapāla belongs at about 550–600 CE then Vajirabuddhi may stand near him. He knew South India intimately and had South Indian books to hand, once citing a reading found “in a manuscript from Andhra and in some Sinhalese manuscripts” (Hinüber 1996, pp. 171–172, §371).