Vinayālaṅkāra-ṭīkā (paṭhamo bhāgo)

The Vinayālaṅkāraṭīkā, the subcommentary on Sāriputta's Vinayasaṅgaha, and the first of its two volumes — a Burmese book, and one of the few volumes here whose author has a life story on record.

Tipiṭakālaṅkāra was born in 1578 CE and wrote this in 1600s Burma, at Ratanapura (Ava) under king Sirīsudhamma. Bode gives his life from the Sāsanavaṃsa: taken to Prome as a boy, into the Order at thirteen, and he had already put the Vessantara-jātaka into Pali verse before his higher ordination at twenty. When Prome fell to Surakitti he was carried off to the capital, where a monastery was built for him on the bank of the Irrawaddy. Later he withdrew to the Tiriyapabbata for the quiet of the forest. It was there that he “had some occasion to take up Vinaya questions, and the result was the Vinayalamkaratika, one of those numerous works composed by theras of high authority to keep the old traditional ‘discipline’ pure” (Bode 1909, pp. 53–54).

Hinüber's assessment is cooler than the biography. The work is eloquent but contains little new information, though it does at times weigh the views of older commentaries — the Vimativinodanī, the Mahāganthipada, the Porāṇaṭīkā. Its author is remembered chiefly as an Abhidhamma scholar and a saint, not as a Vinaya master.