Vinayavinicchayaṭīkā

The subcommentary on Buddhadatta's Vinayavinicchaya, written in Ceylon under Parakkamabāhu I, 1153–1186 CE.

Its author is identified only as a pupil of Sāriputta, and the introduction explains why that is enough for the tradition: it spends its opening praising Sāriputta's learning, listing his subcommentaries on the Samantapāsādikā and the Manorathapūraṇī and a jotisattha, a work on astronomy, besides.

Two things make it worth reading on its own account. It names five initiators — and for the first time in this literature, laymen are among them: the Thera Sumaṅgala Araññavāsin, the Thera Buddhamitta Coḷa, the Thera Mahākassapasīha Coḷa, the Upāsaka Dhammakitti Paṇḍita, and the merchant Bhānu. And it is this book that expressly calls Buddhaghosa and Buddhadatta contemporaries and preserves the story of their meeting — evidence not of what happened, but of what the tradition assumed: that Buddhaghosa's work came slightly before the Vinayavinicchaya.